Tracy Park: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

CHAPTER LII.

'FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.'

'Grandma, Jerrie has promised to be my wife!' Harold said to his grandmother that night when he took Jerrie in to her about ten o'clock, during which time they had walked to the Tramp House, and sitting down upon the chair which would hold but one, had talked the whole matter over, from the morning Harold first saw the sweet little face in the carpet-bag to the present moment when the same sweet face was pressed lovingly against his, and the same arms which had clung to him in the snow were around his neck in the darkness, as they went over with the old, old story, newest always and best to the last one who listens to it and believes that it is true.

'Father, I have promised to marry Harold,' Jerrie said to Arthur the next morning as she stood before him in the Gretchen room, with Harold's hand in hers, and a look in her face something like what Gretchen's had worn when Arthur first called her his wife.

'Lord bless you, I knew it was coming, but did not think it would be quite so soon. You shock my nerves dreadfully,' Arthur exclaimed, springing up and walking two or three times across the room. Then, confronting the young couple, he said, 'Going to marry Harold? I knew you would all this time. Well, he will do as well as any one to look after the business. Frank is no good, and Colvin is too old. So, get married at once, within a week if you like. I'm off for Germany next month, to find Gretchen's grave, and the house, and the picture, and everything, and as I shall take you with me I shall need some one with brains to look after things while I am gone.'

'But father,' Jerrie began, 'if I go to Germany, Harold will go, too, and if he stops here, I shall stay.'

Arthur looked at her inquiringly a moment, and then, as he begun to understand, replied: 'Ah, yes, I see; "where thou goest, I go, and where thou—" and so forth, and so forth. Well, all right; only you must come here directly; it will never do to stay there, now you are engaged; and you must be married in this room, with Gretchen looking on, and soon, too. No wedding, of course, Maude's death is too recent for that; but soon, very soon, so we can get off. I'll engage passage at once in the Germanic, which sails the 15th of October, and you shall be married the 10th. That's three weeks from to-day, and will give you a few days in New York. I'll leave Frank here till we return, and then he must go, of course, and the new mistress step in with Mrs. Crawford to superintend. We will get some nice man and woman to stay with her while we are gone.'

He had settled everything rapidly, but Jerrie had something to say upon the subject. She did not wish to come to Tracy Park altogether while Mrs. Tracy was there; she would rather enjoy the lovely room which Harold had built for her, she said, and preferred to be married in the cottage, the only home she had ever known.

'I shall stay with you all day,' she continued, 'but go home at night.'

'And so have a long walk with Harold. Yes, I see,' Arthur said, laughingly, but assenting finally to her proposal.