'To Maude!' Jerry replied. 'I would do anything for Maude. Yes, I will bring the letter to you if he writes one. You are sure it would be right for me to do so?'
Frank had touched the right cord when he mentioned his daughter's name, for during these years of close companionship the two little girls had learned to love each other devotedly, though naturally Jerry's was the stronger and less selfish attachment of the two. To her Maude was a queen who had a right to tyrannize over and command her if she pleased; and as the tyranny was never very severe, and was usually followed by some generous act of contrition, she did not mind it at all, and was always ready to make up and be friends whenever it suited the capricious little lady.
'Yes, I will do it for Maude,' she said again; but there was a troubled look on her face, and a feeling in her heart as if, in some way, she was false to Arthur in thus consenting to his brother's wishes.
But, she reflected, Arthur was crazy, so people said, and she herself knew better than anyone else of his many fanciful vagaries, which, at times, took the form of actual insanity. For weeks he would seem perfectly rational, and then suddenly his mood would change, and he would talk strange things to himself and the child, who was now so necessary to him, and who alone had a soothing influence over him. Only the day before, as Jerry had told Frank, Arthur had been unusually excited, after listening to a simple air which he had taught to her, and which, at his request, she sang to him after Maude had gone out and left them alone.
'I could swear you were Gretchen, singing to me in the twilight, and across the meadow comes the tinkle of the bells where the cows and goats are feeding,' he said to her, as he paced up and down the room.'
Then, stopping suddenly, he went up to her, and pushing her soft, wavy hair from her forehead, looking long and earnestly into her face.
'Cherry,' he said at last, using the pet name he often gave her, 'you are some like Gretchen as she must have been when of your age. Oh, if you only were hers and mine! But there was no child; and yet—and yet—'
He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then going to a drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never seen open before, he took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his eye rapidly over it until he found a certain paragraph, which he bade Jerry read.
The paragraph was as follows:
'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am sure will make you as glad as I am.'