He was in the cottage by this time—in the clean, cool kitchen where the supper table was laid with its plain fare, wholly unlike the costly viands which daily loaded his board.
"Don't wait for me, Harold must be hungry," he said, adding quickly: "Or stay if you will permit me, I will take a cup of tea with you. The drive has given me an appetite, and your tea smells very inviting."
It was a great honor to have Arthur Tracy at her table, and Mrs. Crawford felt it as such, and was very sorry, too, that she had nothing better to offer him than bread and butter and radishes, with milk, and a dish of cold beans, and chopped beets, and a piece of apple pie saved for Harold from dinner. But she made him welcome, and Jerry, delighted to return the hospitality she had received, brought him a clean plate and cup and saucer, and asked if she might get the best sugar-bowl and the white sugar. Then, remembering the beautiful flowers which had adorned the table at Tracy Park, she ran out, and gathering a bunch of June pinks, put them in a little glass by his plate.
When all was ready and they had taken their seats at the table, Mrs. Crawford closed her eyes reverently and asked the accustomed blessing which in that house preceded every meal. Jerry's amen was a good deal louder and more emphatic than usual, while she nodded her head to Arthur, with an expression which he understood to mean, "You know now what you ought to say, instead of that long prayer," and he nodded back that he did so understand it.
Arthur enjoyed the supper immensely, or pretended that he did. He ate three slices of bread and butter; he drank three cups of tea; he even tried the beans and the beets, but declined the radishes, which, he said, would give him nightmare.
When supper was over and the table cleared away, he still showed no signs of going, but asking Mrs. Crawford to take a seat near him, he plunged at once into the business which had brought him there, and which, since he had seen Harold in his working-dress and heard what he was trying to do, had grown to be of a two-fold nature. He was very lonely, he said, and the little taste he had had of Jerry's society had made him wish for more, and he must have her with him a part at least of every day.
"In short," he said, "I should like to undertake her education myself until she is older, when I will see that she has the proper finishing. She tells me she hates the district school, with Bill Peterkin and his warts—"
"Trying to kiss me," Jerry interrupted, as, open-eyed and open-mouthed, she stood, with her hand on his shoulder, listening to him.
"Yes, trying to kiss you, though I do not blame him much for that," Arthur said, with a smile, and then continued: "She is ambitious enough to want a governess like Ann Eliza Peterkin and my brother's daughter, but I am better than a dozen governesses. I can teach her all the rudiments of an English education, with French and German, and Latin, too, if she likes; and my plan is, that she shall come to me every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, at ten in the morning, get her lessons and her lunch with me, and return home at four in the afternoon. Would you like it, Cherry?"
"Oh-h-oh!" was all the answer Jerry could make for a moment, but her cheeks were scarlet, and tears of joy stood in her eyes, until she glanced at Harold; then all the brightness faded from her face, for how could she accept this great good and leave him to drudge and toil alone?