He secretly and furiously objected to the dancing and visits in Farwell's cottage. He was ashamed to voice this feeling, for Farwell was his friend and had taught him all he knew, but Farwell's age did not in the least blind Jerry-Jo to the fact that he was a man, and he did not enjoy seeing Priscilla so free and easy with any other of the male sex, be he ancient enough to topple into the grave.
"She'll dance for me—for me!" the young fellow ground his teeth. "I'll make her forget to prance and grin unless she does it for me. The master's just training her away from me and putting notions in her head. I'll take her to the States—maybe her dancing will help us both there. I don't mean to drudge as Jamsie Hornby does! Better things for me!"
Sex attraction swayed Jerry-Jo madly in those days and he thought it love, as many a better man had done before him. The blood of his mother controlled him largely and he wished that he might carry the girl off to his wigwam, and, at his leisure, with beads and blankets, or other less tangible methods, win her and conquer her. But present conditions held the boy in check and compelled him to adopt more modern tactics. He stole, when he couldn't beg, from his poor father all the money Jerry wrenched from an occasional day's work. With this he bought books for Priscilla, vaguely realizing that these would most interest her, but his selection often made her laugh. Piqued by her indifference, Jerry-Jo plotted a thing that led, later, to tragic results. Remembering the favour Priscilla had long ago shown for the book from Far Hill Place, he decided to utilize the taste of the absent owner, and the owner himself, for his own ends, not realizing that Priscilla had never connected the cripple Jerry-Jo had described, with the musician of the magic summer afternoon that had set her life in new currents.
It was an easy matter to enter the Far Hill Place, and, where one was not troubled with conscience, a simple thing to select at random, but with economy, books from the well-filled shelves. These gifts presently found their way to Priscilla, cunningly disguised as mail packages. Inadvertently the very book Priscilla had once cried over came to her and touched her strangely.
"Why should he send me these—send me this?" she asked Jerry-Jo, who had brought the package to her.
"He always wanted you to have it. I told you that; he remembers, I suppose, and wants you to have it. He said it was more yours than his." To test her Jerry-Jo was hiding behind Travers.
"I'd walk a hundred miles over the rock on bare feet to thank him," the girl replied, her big eyes shining. And with the words there entered into Jerry-Jo's distorted imagination a concrete and lasting jealousy of poor Dick Travers, who was innocent of any actual memory of Priscilla Glenn. Travers at that time was studying as few college men do, always with the spur of lost years and a big ambition lashing him on.
During that winter the stolen books from the Far Hill Place caused Priscilla much wonderment and some little embarrassment. She had to keep them secret owing to her father's sentiment, and, for some reason, she did not confide in Farwell. This new and unexpected interest in her life was so foreign to anything with which the master had to do that she felt no inclination to share it.
"But I cannot understand," she often said to Jerry-Jo. "I'd like to write to him. Do you think you could find out for me where he is? That he should even remember me! I would not have him think me so ungrateful as I must seem."
She and Jerry-Jo were in the path leading to Lonely Farm from Kenmore as she spoke, and suddenly something the young fellow said brought her to a sharp standstill.