"Oh, Jerrie, here is Billy Peterkin, with his hands full. What shall I do with him?"
Dashing away her tears, Jerrie replied:
"Send him in here, of course."
In a few moments the dapper little man was in the wood-shed, with a large bouquet of hot-house flowers in one hand and a basket of delicious black-caps in the other. For a moment he stood staring first at Tom on the wooden chair glaring savagely at him, and then at Jerrie by the washtub with the traces of tears on her face—then, with a kind of forced laugh, he said:
"Be-beg pardon, if I in-tr-trude. Looks dusedly like l-love in a t-t-tub."
"And if it is, you have knocked the bottom out," Tom said to him.
Both jokes were atrocious, but they made Jerrie laugh, which was something. She was glad on the whole that Billy had come, and when he offered her the berries and the flowers, she accepted them graciously, and bade him sit down, if he could find a seat.
"Here is one on the wash bench," she said, "or, will be when I have emptied the tub;" and she was about to take up the latter, when Billy sprang to her assistance and emptied it himself, while Tom sat looking on, chafing with anger and disgust.
After a moment Billy stuttered out:
"Ann Eliza s-s-sent me here, and wants you to c-c-come and see her rooms. G-g-got a suite, you know; and, by Jove, they are like a b-b-bazaar, they are so f-full of things, and flowers; half Vassar is there. Got your basket of daisies, Tom, and when I asked her where she g-g-got 'em, she said it was n-n-none of my business. D-did she steal 'em?" and he turned to Jerrie, whose face was scarlet, as she replied: