He knew he did not pronounce the word right, and was surprised at the sudden lighting up of the child's eyes as she tried to repeat the name. 'Oo-oo-ee,' she began, with a tremendous effort, but the W mastered her, and she gave it up with a shake of her head.
'I not say dat oo-oo-ee,' she said, and he put the question in another form:
'Where did your mamma die?'
'Tamp House; f'oze to deff,' was now the ready answer, a natural one, too, for she had been taught by Harold that such was the case, and had often gone with him to the house where he found her, and where the old table still stood against the wall.
No one picnicked there now, for the place was said to be haunted, and the superstitious ones told each other that on stormy nights, when the wild winds were abroad, lights had been seen in the Tramp House, where a pale-faced woman, with her long, black hair streaming down her back, stood in the door-way, shrieking for help, while the cry of a child mingled with her call. But Harold shared none of these fancies. He was not afraid of the building, and often went there with Jerry, and sitting with her on the table, told her again and again how he had found her mother that wintry morning, and how funny she herself had looked in the old carpet-bag, and so it is not strange that when Mr. Tracy asked her where her mother died, she should answer, 'In the Tramp House,' although she had acted a pantomime whose reality must have taken place under very different circumstances.
'Of course your mother died in the Tramp House, and I have nothing with which to reproach myself. I am altogether too morbid on the subject,' Frank said, and he had decided that he was a pretty good sort of fellow, after all, when at last Mrs. Crawford came in and he paid her for Jerry's board.
It was a part of Frank's plan to save the money out of his own personal expenses, so he smoked two cigars less each day and went without claret for dinner, except on Sunday, and never touched champagne, and wore his hats and coats until his wife said they were shabby and insisted upon new ones. In this way he saved more than three dollars a week, but the overplus was laid aside for the time when Jerry must necessarily cost him more because she would be older. In some respects he was doing his duty by the child, who, next to Harold and Mrs. Crawford, whom she called grandma, loved him better than any one else. She always ran to meet him when he came, and sometimes, when he went away, accompanied him down the lane, holding his hand and asking him numberless questions about Tracy Park and about his little girl, and why she never came to see her.
Frank could not tell Jerry of his wife's bitter prejudice against her, and that this was the reason why Maude had never been to the cottage or Jerry to the park. But if Jerry had not visited it in person, she was greatly interested in the handsome house and grounds, and the lovely rooms where the crazy man lived. This was Harold's designation of Mr. Arthur—the crazy man—and perhaps of all the things at Tracy Park, Jerry was most desirous to see him and his rooms. Harold, who, on one of the rare occasions when Arthur was out to dine, had been sent to the house on an errand, had gone with Jack into these rooms, which he described minutely to his grandmother and Jerry, dwelling longest upon the beautiful picture in the window. 'Gretchen, he calls it,' he said; and then Jerry, who was listening intently, gave a sudden upward and sidewise turn to her Lead, just as she had done when Mr. Tracy spoke to her of Wiesbaden.
'Detchen,' she repeated, with a little hesitancy. 'Vat the name vas? Say again.'
He said it again, and over the child's face there came a puzzled expression, as if she were trying to recall something which baffled all her efforts. But she did not forget the name, and that evening Mrs. Crawford heard her singing to herself,