‘But father,’ Jerrie began, ’if I go to Germany, Harold will go, too, and if he stops here, I shall stay.’

Arthur looked at her inquiringly a moment, and then, as he begun to understand, replied:  ’Ah, yes, I see; “where thou goest, I go, and where thou—­” and so forth, and so forth.  Well, all right; only you must come here directly; it will never do to stay there, now you are engaged; and you must be married in this room, with Gretchen looking on, and soon, too.  No wedding, of course, Maude’s death is too recent for that; but soon, very soon, so we can get off.  I’ll engage passage at once in the Germanic, which sails the 15th of October, and you shall be married the 10th.  That’s three weeks from to-day, and will give you a few days in New York.  I’ll leave Frank here till we return, and then he must go, of course, and the new mistress step in with Mrs. Crawford to superintend.  We will get some nice man and woman to stay with her while we are gone.’

He had settled everything rapidly, but Jerrie had something to say upon the subject.  She did not wish to come to Tracy Park altogether while Mrs. Tracy was there; she would rather enjoy the lovely room which Harold had built for her, she said, and preferred to be married in the cottage, the only home she had ever known.

‘I shall stay with you all day,’ she continued, ‘but go home at night.’

‘And so have a long walk with Harold.  Yes, I see,’ Arthur said, laughingly, but assenting finally to her proposal.

It was Jerrie now who planned everything, with Harold’s assistance, and who broached the subject of Frank’s future to her father, asking what provision he intended to make for him when he left Tracy Park.

‘What provision?’ Arthur said.  ’I guess he has made provision for himself all these years, when my purse has been as free to him as myself.  Colvin tells me there has been an awful lot of money spent somewhere.’

‘Yes,’ Jerrie replied, ’but you gave him permission to spend it, and it would hardly be fair now to leave him with little or nothing, and he so broken down.  When Maude feared she was going to die, and before she knew who I was, she wrote a letter for her father and you, asking him to give me what he would have given her, and you to do the same.  So now, I want you to give Maude’s father what you would have given me for Maude’s sake.’

‘Bless my soul, Jerrie!’ Arthur said.  ’What a beggar you are!  I don’t know what I should have given you; all I am worth, perhaps.  How much will satisfy you for Frank?  Tell me, and it is done.’

Jerrie thought one hundred thousand dollars would not be any too much, nor did it seem so to Arthur, who placed but little value upon his money, and Jerrie was deputed to tell her uncle what provision was to be made for him, and that, if he wished, he was to remain at the park until his brother’s return from Europe.

Frank was not in his own room, but Mrs. Tracy was, and to her Jerrie first communicated the intelligence that she was to be married and go with her father to Germany.  The look which the highly scandalized lady gave her was wonderful, as she said: