"She is so anxious to see you. Don't you think you can go this afternoon?" she said to Harold, in the morning, as she helped him weed the garden and pick the strawberries for dinner.
"Ye-es, I guess I can—if you'll go with me," he said.
He was so loth to be away from Jerrie when it was not absolutely necessary, that even a call upon Maude without her did not seem very tempting. But Jerrie could not go, for Nina and Marian Raymond were coming to spend the afternoon, and Harold went alone to the Park House, where he found Maude in the room she called her studio, trying to finish a little water-color which she had sketched of the cottage as it was before the roof was raised.
"I mean it for Jerrie," she had said to Harold, who stood by her when she sketched it, "and I am going to put her under the tree, with her sun-bonnet hanging down her back, as she used to wear it when she was a little girl, and you are to be over there by the fence, looking at me coming up the lane."
It was the best thing Maude had ever done, for the likeness to Jerrie and to herself was perfect, while the cottage, embowered in trees and flowers, made it a most attractive picture. Harold had praised it a great deal, and told her that it would make her famous. But when the carpenter work came on Maude put it aside until now, when she brought it out again, and was just beginning to retouch it in places, as Harold was announced.
She was looking very tired, and it seemed to Harold that she had lost pounds of flesh since he saw her last. Her face was pale and wan, but it flushed brightly as he came in, and she went forward to meet him.
"Hally, you naughty boy!" she began, as she gave him her hand. "Why didn't you come before? You don't know how I have missed you. You must not forget me now that Jerrie is at home."
She led him to a seat, and then herself sank into a large, cushioned easy-chair, against which she leaned her head wearily, while she looked at him with eyes which ought to have told how much he was to her, and so put him on his guard, and saved the misunderstanding which followed.
"No, Maude, I couldn't forget you," he said; and without really knowing that he was doing it, he put his hand upon the little, thin white one lying on the arm of the chair.
Every nerve in Maude's body thrilled to the touch of Harold's hand upon which she involuntarily laid her other one. One would have thought them lovers, sitting there together, but nothing could have been farther from Harold's mind. He was thinking only of Jerrie, and his resolve to confide in Maude, and get her opinion with regard to his chance.