Jerry played catch until it was chore time. Then he went home, passing the house with his head turned in the opposite direction. Judith and Luella, peering out of the kitchen window, saw him go.
For four successive Sundays Jerry repeated this performance. By the second Sunday the girls had formed a pretty shrewd notion of the reason for his peculiar behavior.
"I'm jes a-goin' to set still an' see haow long he keeps it up," said Judith wickedly, as she sat by the kitchen window trimming a hat with peacock feathers that had molted from the tail of Aunt Eppie's peacock. "I'm a-goin' to sew the feathers all raound an' raound the brim, Elly; an' then have some a-droppin' daown behind. Won't it make a nice hat?"
The longer Jerry continued to come on Sundays in his best clothes, the more amusement he provided for Judith. She felt gratified by his attentions; but she took no interest in him any more than in any of the other young fellows of the neighborhood, with all of whom she dearly loved to coquette. So she was not at all impatient at this slow courtship. She liked to go out and draw water or hang something on the line in order to see Jerry turn his head away from her. Often she found it necessary to go into the barnyard to feed the chickens or slop the hogs; and would stop and exchange a few casual words with him for the pleasure of watching his embarrassment and enjoying his discomfiture when she turned away.
On the fourth Sunday, as Jerry was hanging about the barnyard with the boys, he saw Dick Whitmarsh drive up to the Pippinger door in a newly-washed buggy. In a few moments he was galvanized to see Judith come out, radiant in her Sunday best, with the peacock hat glowing iridescently above her black hair. She and Dick got into the buggy and drove gaily away.
Jerry went home almost immediately, feeling like a small rooster that has been chased out of the cornfield by a larger one. He savagely pulled off his good clothes, put on his comfortable old overalls, went out to the barn and fell to cursing and currying the horses with all his might.
The next Sunday Jerry appeared in the Pippinger wagon drive very early in the afternoon. He was driving Jinny, the spirited four-year-old bay mare; and the Blackford family buggy was washed and polished to resplendence.
"Hey, Judy!" he shouted in loud, careless-like fashion from the buggy seat.
He had to shout three or four times before the door at last opened and Judith appeared on the threshold.
"Say, Judy, wanta come—ahem—fer a little drive?"