'I am Tom's superior in everything but money, and yet he treats me like a dog,' he said, as he seated himself upon the grass, where he sat fanning himself with his straw hat.
When Jerry appeared in view he brightened at once, for in all the world there was not anything half so sweet and lovely to him as the little blue-eyed girl who seated herself beside him, and, nestling close to him, laid her curly head upon his arm.
'I've come to help you rake the hay,' she said, 'for grandma told me you had a headache at noon, and couldn't eat your huckleberry pie. I am awfully sorry, Harold, but I ate it myself, it looked so good, instead of saving it for your supper. It was nasty and mean in me, and I hope it will make me sick.'
But Harold told her he did not care for the pie, and would rather that she would eat it if she liked it. Then he questioned her of the park house and of Arthur; asking if the bees were often in his head now, or had she driven them out.
'No, I guess I haven't. They were awful yesterday and to-day,' Jerry replied. 'He was talking of Gretchen all the time. I wonder who she was. Sometimes I look at her until it seems to me I have seen her or something like her, a paler face with sadder eyes. How he must have loved her, better than you or I could ever love anybody; don't you think so?'
Harold hesitated a moment, and then replied:
'I don't know, but it seems to me I love you as much as a man could ever love another.'
'Phoo! Of course you do; but that's boy love; that isn't like when you are old enough to have a beau!' and Jerry laughed merrily, as she sprang up, and, taking Harold's rake, began to toss the hay about rapidly, bidding him sit still and see how fast she could work in his place.
Harold was very tired, and his head was aching badly, so for a time he sat still, watching the graceful movements of the beautiful child, who, it seemed to him, was slipping away from him. Constant intercourse with a polished man like Arthur Tracy had not been without its effect upon her, and there was about her an air which with strangers would have placed her at once above the ordinary level of simple country girls. This Harold had been the first to detect, and though he rejoiced at Jerry's good fortune, there was always with him a dread lest she should grow beyond him, and that he should lose the girl he loved so much.
'What if she should think me a clown and a clodhopper, as Tom Tracy does?' he said to himself, as he watched her raking up the hay faster, and quite as well as he could have done himself. 'I believe I should want to die.'