'Billy!' she exclaimed, 'do you know me so little as to think I would tell them, or anybody? I have more honor than that,' and she gave him her hand, which he held tightly in his while he looked earnestly into the sweet young face which could never be his, every muscle of his own quivering with emotion, and telling of the pain he was enduring.
'Good-bye. I shall be more like a ma-man, and less a ba-baby when I see you again,' and springing into his cart he drove rapidly away.
Jerrie found her grandmother seated at a table and trying to iron.
'Grandma,' she said, 'this is too bad. I did not mean to stay so long. Put down that flat-iron this minute. I am coming there as soon as I lay off my hat.'
Running up the stairs to her room, Jerrie put away her hat, and then, throwing herself upon the bed, cried for a moment as hard as she could cry. The look on Billy's face haunted her, and she pitied him now more than she had pitied Dick St. Claire.
'Dick will get over it, and marry somebody else, but Billy never,' she said.
Then, rising up, she bathed her eyes, and pushing back her tangled hair, stood for a moment before the mirror, contemplating the reflection of herself in it.
'Jerrie Crawford,' she said, 'you must be a mean, heartless, good-for-nothing girl, for it certainly is not your Dutch face, nor yellow hair, nor great staring eyes, which make men think that you will marry them; so it must be your flirting, coquettish manners. I hate a flirt. I hate you, Jerrie Crawford.'
Once when a little girl, Jerrie had said to Harold, 'Why do all the boys want to kiss me so much?' and now she might have asked, 'Why do these same boys wish to marry me?' It was a curious fact that she should have had three offers within twenty-four hours; and she didn't like it, and her face wore a troubled look all that hot afternoon as she stood at the ironing table, perspiring at every pore, and occasionally smiling to herself as she thought, 'Grassy Spring, Le Bateau, Tracy Park, I might take my choice, if I would, but I prefer the cottage,' and then at the thought of Tracy Park her thoughts went off across the sea to Germany, and the low room with the picture upon the wall, and her resolve to find it some day.
'Far in the future it may be, but find it I will, and find, too, who I am,' she said to herself, little dreaming that the finding was close at hand, and that she had that day lighted the train which was so soon to bear her on to the end.