"How did you find Maude?" he asked.
"Weaker than I supposed," Jerrie replied, "and so tired. Oh, Tom, I know she hurt herself worrying about my room as she did, and what if she should die?"
"Nonsense," Tom answered, carelessly. "Maude won't die. She's got the Tracy constitution, which nothing can kill. Don't fret about your room. Maude liked being there. Nothing could keep her away. And don't flatter yourself that it was all love for you which took her there so much, for it wasn't. She is just mashed with Harold, while he—well, what can a young man do when a pretty girl—and Maude is pretty—when she gushes at him all the time? It is a regular flirtation, and everybody knows about it except mother and the Gov."
"Who is the Gov.?" Jerrie asked, sharply.
"Why, you Vassars must be very innocent," Tom replied, with a laugh, "not to know that Gov. is one's respected sire; the old man, some call him, but I am more respectful. My gracious, though! isn't it sweltering? I'm nearly baked, you make me walk so fast!" and he wiped the great drops of sweat from his forehead.
"Why don't you go back, then?" Jerrie asked.
"I am going home with you," he replied. "Do you think I'd let you go alone?"
"Go alone?" Jerrie repeated, stopping short and fixing her blue eyes upon him. "You have let me go alone a hundred times, and after dark, too, when I was much smaller than I am now, and less able to defend myself, supposing there was anything to fear, which there is not. Pray go back, and not trouble yourself for me."
"I shall not go back," Tom said. "I waited on purpose to come with you. There is something I must say to you, and I may as well say it now as any other time."
Jerrie was tall, but Tom was six inches taller, and he was looking down into her eyes with an expression in his before which hers fell, for she guessed what it was he wished to say to her, and her heart beat painfully as, without another word, she walked rapidly on until they were in the woods near a place where four tall pines formed a kind of oblong square. Here an iron seat had been placed years before, when the Tracy children were young, and held what they called their picnics under the thick boughs of the pines which shaded them from both heat and cold. Laying his hand on Jerrie's shoulder, Tom said to her: