Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

So Harold left the employ of Peterkin, greatly to the chagrin of that functionary, who had found him the most faithful boy he had ever had. But this was years ago, and matters had changed somewhat since then. Harold was a man now—a graduate from Harvard, with an air and dignity about him which commanded respect even from Peterkin, who was sitting upon his high stool when Harold came in with his application. Billy, who was Harold's fast friend, was now in the business with his father, and as he chanced to be present, the thing was soon arranged, and Harold received into the office at a salary of twelve dollars per week, which was soon increased to fifteen and twenty, and at last, as the autumn advanced and Harold began to talk of taking the same school in town which he had once before taught, he was offered $1.500 a year, if he would remain, as foreman of the office, where his services were invaluable. But Harold had chosen the law for his profession, and as teaching school was more congenial to him than writing in the office, and would give him more time for reading law, he declined the salary and took the school, which he kept for two successive winters, going between times into the office whenever his services were needed, which was very often, as they knew his worth, and Billy was always glad to have him there.

In this way he managed to lay aside quite a little sum of money, besides paying his interest to Arthur, and when Maude came home from Europe in March he felt himself warranted in beginning to raise the roof. He was naturally a mechanic, and would have made a splendid carpenter; he was also something of an architect, and sketched upon paper the changes he proposed making. The roof was to be raised over Jerrie's room; there was to be a pretty bay-window at the south, commanding a view of the Collingwood grounds and the river. There was to be another window on a side, but whether to the east or the west he could not quite decide. There was to be a dressing-room and large closet, while the main room was to be carried up in the center, after the fashion of a church, and to be ceiled with narrow strips of wood painted alternately with a pale blue and gray. He showed the sketch to his grandmother, who approved it, just as she approved everything he did, but suggested that he submit it to Maude Tracy, who, she heard, had become an artist and had a studio; so he took the plan to Maude, explaining it to her, and saying it was to be a surprise to Jerrie, when she came home for good in the summer. Maude was interested and enthusiastic at once, and entered heart and soul into the matter, making some suggestions which Harold adopted, and deciding for him where the extra window was to be placed.

"Put it to the east," she said, "for Jerrie is always looking toward the rising sun, because, she says, her old home is that way. And, besides, she can see the Tramp House she is so fond of. For my part, I think it a poky place, and never like to pass it after dark, lest I should see the woman standing in the door, with the candle in her hand, crying for help. Where was Jerrie then, I wonder! Wouldn't that make a very effective picture? The storm, the open door, the frantic woman in it, with the candle held high over her head, and Jerrie clutching her dress behind, with her great blue eyes staring out in the darkness. That is the way I have always seen it. I mean to paint the picture, and hang it in the new room as another surprise to Jerrie."

"Oh, don't!" Harold said with a shudder. "Jerrie would not like it. It almost killed her when she first knew of the cry which Mr. Arthur heard and the light I saw that night. She insisted upon knowing everything there was to know; and when I told her all the color left her face, and for a moment she sat rigid as a stone, with a look I shall never forget, and then she cried as I never saw any body cry before. This was three years ago, and she has never spoken to me of it since."

Harold's voice trembled as he talked, while Maude cried outright. The idea of the picture was given up, and she went back to the subject of the new room in which she seemed quite as much interested as Harold himself. When the roof was raised, and the floor laid, and the frame-work of the bay-window up, she went nearly every day to the cottage to watch the progress of the work, and to keep Harold's one hired man up to the mark, if he showed the least sign of lagging.

"She is wus than a slave-driver," the man said to Harold one day. "Why, if I ever stop to take a chaw, or rest my bones a bit, she's after me in a jiffy, and asks if I don't think I can get so much done in an hour if I work as tight as I can clip it. I was never so druv in my life."

And yet both the man and Harold liked to see the little lady there, walking through the shavings, and holding high her dainty skirts as she clambered over piles of boards and shingles, or perching herself on the work bench, superintended them both, and twice by her intervention saved a door from swinging the wrong way, and from being a little askew.

Frank, too, was almost as much interested in the work as Maude was, and once offered his services, as did Dick St. Claire and Billy Peterkin.

"That's splendid. We'll have a bee, and get a lot done," Maude said; and she pressed into the bee her father, and Dick, and Billy, and Fred Raymond, and Tom, the latter of whom did nothing but find fault, saying that the ceiling ought to have been of different woods, the floor inlaid, and the tops of the windows cathedral glass.

"And I suppose you will find the money for all that elegance," Maude said, as she held one end of a board for Harold to nail. "We are cutting our garment according to the cloth, and if you don't like it you'd better go away. We do not want any drones in the hive, do we, Hally?"