CHAPTER XXX.
THE WALK HOME.
ALL the way from the station to the gate Harold was trying to think of something to say besides the merest commonplaces, and wondering at Jerrie's silence. She had seemed glad to see him, he had seen that in her eyes, and seen there something else which puzzled and troubled him, and he was about to ask her what it was when she stopped so abruptly, and said:
"Why didn't you come to commencement? Tom Tracy said you were shingling a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" Harold said, bursting into a laugh. "That is why you have been so stiff and distant, ever since we left the depot, that I could not touch you with a ten-foot pole."
"Well, I don't care," Jerrie replied, with a sob in her voice. "Everybody had some friend there, but myself. You don't know how lonely I felt when I went on the stage and knew there was no home face looking at me in all that crowd. I think you might have come any way."
"But, Jerrie," Harold said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, as they slowly walked on, "wait a little before you condemn me utterly. I wanted to come quite as much as you wanted to have me. I remembered what a help it was to me when I was graduated to see your face in the crowd and know by its expression that you were satisfied."
"I did not suppose you saw me," Jerrie exclaimed, her voice very different in its tone from what it had been at first.
"Saw you!" and Harold's hand tightened its grasp on her shoulder. "Saw you! I scarcely saw any one else except you, and Maude, who sat beside you. I knew you would be there, and I looked the room over, missing you at first, and feeling as if something were wanting to fire me up, then, when I found you, the inspiration came, and if I began to flag ever so little, I had only to look at your blue eyes and my blood was up again."