'Yes, at times,' Jerry answered: 'and yesterday, after I sang him a little German song, which he taught me, he had them pretty bad—the bees in his head, I mean: that is what he calls it when things are mixed; and he says he is going to write to her, or her friends.'
'Write to her! I thought he had given that up. I thought he—Did he say, "Write to her friends?"' Frank gasped as he felt himself grow cold and sick with this threatened danger.
Arthur had seemed so quiet and happy with Jerry, and had said so little of Gretchen, that Frank had grown quite easy in his mind, and the black shadow of fear did not trouble him quite so much as formerly. But now it was over him again, and grew in intensity as he questioned the child.
'Have you ever tried to find out who Gretchen is?' he asked at last.
'No,' she replied, 'but I guess she is his wife.'
'Yes,' Frank said, falteringly, 'his wife; and where do you think she lived?'
'Oh, I know that. In Wiesbaden. He told me so once, and it seems as if I had been there, too, when he talked about it, and I hear the music and see the flowers, and a white-faced woman is with me, not at all like mother, who, they say, was ugly and dark; black as a nigger, Tom told me once, when he was mad. Was she black?'
Mr. Tracy made no reply to this, but said, suddenly:
'Jerry, do you like me well enough to do me a favor, a great favor?'
'Why, yes, I guess I do. I like you very much, though not as well as I do Harold and Mr. Arthur. What do you want?' was Jerry's answer.