amous for.

"I believe you don't know me!" she said, with a little shriek, for
Tommy had looked bewildered. "That would be too mortifying. Please
pretend you do!"

Her look of appeal, the way in which she put her plump little hands
together, as if about to say her prayers, brought it all back to
Tommy. The one thing he was not certain of was whether he had proposed
to her.

It was the one thing of which she was certain.

"You think I can forget so soon," he replied reproachfully, but
carefully.

"Then tell me my name," said she; she thought it might lead to his
mentioning his own.

"I don't know what it is now. It was Mrs. Jerry once."

"It is Mrs. Jerry still."

"Then you did not marry him, after all?"

No wild joy had surged to his face, but when she answered yes, he
nodded his head with gentle melancholy three times. He had not the
smallest desire to deceive the lady; he was simply an actor who had
got his cue and liked his part.

[Illustration: "But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry," she said
softly.]

"But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry," she said softly. "I suppose
it suits me somehow."

"You will always be Mrs. Jerry to me," he replied huskily. Ah, those
meetings with old loves!

"If you minded so much," Mrs. Jerry said, a little tremulously (she
had the softest heart, though her memory was a trifle defective), "you
might have discovered whether I had married him or not."

"Was there no reason why I should not seek to discover it?" Tommy
asked with tremendous irony, but not knowing in the least what he
meant.

It confused Mrs. Jerry. They always confused her when they were
fierce, and yet she liked them to be fierce when she re-met them, so
few of them were.

But she said the proper thing. "I am glad you have got over it."

Tommy maintained a masterly silence. No wonder he was a power with
women.

"I say I am glad you have got over it," murmured Mrs. Jerry again. Has
it ever been noticed that the proper remark does not always gain in
propriety with repetition?

It is splendid to know that right feeling still kept Tommy silent.

Yet she went on briskly as if he had told her something: "Am I
detaining you? You were walking so quickly that I thought you were in
pursuit of someone."

It brought Tommy back to earth, and he could accept her now as an old
friend he was glad to meet again. "You could not guess what I was in
pursuit of, Mrs. Jerry," he assured her, and with confidenc