’I would not explain to that brute, but it is not my intention to trouble the town.  I have no more idea who this woman is than you have, and I’ll swear that Peterkin’s vile insinuations with regard to her are false.  My brother says he never saw her in his life, and he speaks the truth.  She may have been on Peterkin’s boat, but I doubt it.  She has every appearance of a foreigner, and her child’—­here Frank’s tongue felt a little thick, but he cleared his throat and went on—­’her child speaks a foreign language—­German, they tell me.  This poor woman died on my—­or rather my brother’s premises.  I have consulted with him, and he thinks as I do, that she should be cared for at our expense.  He says, further, that there is room on the Tracy lot; she is to be buried there.  I shall attend to it at once, and the funeral will take place to-morrow morning at ten o’clock from this house.  What disposition will be made of the child I have not yet decided, but she will not go to the poor-house.’

‘Oh, Mr. Tracy,’ Harold burst out, ’she is mine.  She is to live with grandma and me.  You will not take her from me—­say you will not?’

‘Vill not,’ Jerry reiterated, imitating as well as she could Harold’s last words.

For a moment Mr. Tracy looked fixedly at the boy, pleading for a burden which would necessitate toil, and self-denial, and patience of no ordinary kind and never had he despised himself more than he did then, when, believing what he did believe, he said at last: 

’I will talk with your grandmother, and see what arrangements we can make.  I rather think you have the best right to her.  But she must stay here to-night and until after the funeral, when she can go with you, if you like.’

To this Harold did not object, and as Jerry seemed very happy and content, he left her, while she was exploring the long drawing-room, and examining curiously the different articles of furniture.  As she did not seem disposed to touch anything, she was allowed to go where she liked, although Mrs. Frank remonstrated against her roaming all over the house as if she belonged there, and suggested again that she be sent to the kitchen.  But Frank said ‘no,’ decidedly, and Jerry was left to herself, except as the nurse-girl and Charles looked after her a little.

And so it came about that towards evening she found herself in the upper hall, and after making a tour of the rooms, whose doors were open, she came to one whose door was shut—­nor could she turn the knob, although she tried with all her might.  Doubling her tiny fist, she knocked upon the door, and then, as no one came, kicked against it with her foot, but still with no result.

Inside the room, with Gretchen’s picture, Arthur sat in his dressing-gown, very nervous and a little inclined to be irritable and captious.  He knew there had been an inquest, and that many people had come and gone that day, for he had seen them from his window, and had seen, too, the sleigh, with Frank, and the coroner, and Harold, and a blue hood, drive into the yard.  But to the blue hood he never gave a thought, as he was only intent upon the dead woman, whose presence in the house made him so nervous and restless.