"Maude," he said at last, "how would you like to change places with Jerry? That is, let her come here and live, while we go away and be poor; not quite as she is, but like many people."
"And not wear a sash, and beads, and buttoned boots every day?" Maude interrupted him quickly. "I should not like it at all. Why, Jerry dresses herself, and wipes the dishes, and wears those big aprons all the time. No, I don't want to be poor;" and as if something in her father's mind had communicated itself to her, she raised her head from his shoulder and looked beseechingly at him.
"Nor shall you be poor if I can help it," he said; "but you must be very kind to Jerry, and never let her feel that you are richer than she. Do you understand?"
"I think I do," Maude answered, adding as she kissed him fondly: "And now I s'pose I must go, for there is Hetty come for me; so, good-night, you dearest, best papa in the world."
He knew she believed in him fully; and he could not undeceive her. He would bear the burden he said to himself. There should be no more repining or looking back. Maude must never know; and so Jerry's chance was lost.
The next morning Arthur awoke with a racking headache. He was accustomed to it, it is true; but this one was particularly severe.
"It's the cherries; no wonder; a quart of those sour things would turn upside down any stomach," Charles said, as he glanced at the empty tin pail which was adorning an inlaid table, and then suggested a dose of ipecac as a means of dislodging the offending cherries.
But Arthur declined the medicine. His stomach was well enough, he said. It was his head which ached, and nothing would help that but the cool little hands he had held in his the previous day. Charles must go for Jerry, for he wanted her, and, as when Arthur wanted a thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way to the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a tall lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and talking to herself, partly in English and partly in broken German, which she had resumed since her visit to the park.
"Seemed like something I had dreamed, when he talked like that, and I could almost do it myself," she said to Harold when describing the particulars of her interview with Mr. Tracy, and her tongue fell naturally into the language of her babyhood.
On hearing Charles' errand, her delight was unbounded.