Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

THE NEXT DAY.

JERRIE was astir the next morning almost as soon as the first robin began to sing under her window. She had left a blind open, and the red beams of the rising sun fell upon her face and roused her from a dream of Germany and what she meant to do there. Once fairly awake, Germany seemed far away, as did the fancies of the previous night. The spell, mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or whatever one chooses to call it, was broken, and she began dressing rapidly and noiselessly so as not to awaken her grandmother, who slept in the room beneath hers.

"I shall get the start of her," she said, as she donned a simple working dress which had done her service during the summer vacations for three successive years. "I heard her telling Harold last night to have the tubs and water ready early, for she had put off the Monday's washing until I came home, as I was sure to bring a pile of soiled clothes. And I have; but, my dear grandmother, your poor old twisted hands will not touch them. What is a great strapping girl like me for, I'd like to know, if it is not to wash her own clothes, and yours, too?" and Jerrie nodded resolutely at the fresh young face in the mirror, which nodded back with a smile of approbation of the tout ensemble of the figure reflected in the glass.

And truly it was a very pretty and piquant picture she made in her neat calico dress, which, as it was three years old at least, was a little too short for her, and showed plainly her red stockings and high-heeled slippers, with the strap around her instep. Her sleeves were short, for she had cut them off and arranged them in a puff above her elbows to save rolling them up, and her white bib-apron was fastened on each shoulder with a knot of blue ribbon, Harold's favorite color. She had thoroughly brushed her hair, and then twisting it into a knot, had tucked it under a coquettish muslin cap, whose narrow frill just shaded her face.

"You look like a peasant girl, and I believe you are a peasant girl, and ought to be working in the fields of Germany this minute," she said to herself with a mocking courtesy, as she left the mirror and descended to the kitchen, where, early as it was, she found Harold warming some coffee over a fire of chips, and cutting a slice of dry bread.

"What in the world!" she exclaimed, stopping short on the threshold. "I meant to be the first on the scene, and lo! here you are before me. What are you doing?"

"Getting my breakfast," Harold replied, turning toward her with a slight shade of annoyance on his face. "You see, I have a job. I did not tell you last night that a Mr. Allen, who lives across the river, four miles away, looked in one day when I was painting your ceiling, and liked it so much that he engaged me to paint one for him. I told him I was only an amateur, but he said he'd rather have me than all the boss painters in Shannondale. He offered me three dollars a day and board, which means dinner and supper, or fifteen for the job; and I took the last offer, as I can make the most at it by beginning early and working late, and we need——"

Here he stopped short, for how could he tell Jerrie that the raised roof had taken all his means, and that he even owed the grocer for the sugar she had eaten upon her berries, and the butcher for the bit of steak bought the previous night for her breakfast and his grandmother's. But Jerrie guessed it without his telling, but with her quick instinct and delicate perception knew that no genuine man like Harold cares to have even his best friend know of his poverty if he can help it. Forcing back the tears which sprang to her eyes, she said, cheerily:

"Yes, I know; you are a kind of second Michael Angelo, though I doubt if that old gentleman, at your age, could have done my room better than you did. I don't wonder Mr. Allen wants you. But you are not going to tramp four miles on a hot morning, on nothing but bread and coffee, and such coffee—muddier than the Missouri River! You shall have a decent breakfast, if I can get it for you. Just sit down and rest, and see what a Vassar with a diploma can do."

As she talked she was replenishing the fire with hard wood, putting on the kettle, pouring out the coffee dregs saved from yesterday's breakfast, and hunting for an egg with which to settle the fresh cup she intended to make.