ad communicated itself to her, she raised her head from
his shoulder and looked beseechingly at him.

'Nor shall you be poor, if I can help it,' he said; 'but you must be
very kind to Jerry, and never let her feel that you are richer than she.
Do you understand?'

'I think I do,' Maude answered, adding as she kissed him fondly: 'And
now I s'pose I must go, for there is Hetty come for me; so, good-night,
you dearest, best papa in the world.'

He knew that she believed in him fully; that should he confess his
fault she would understand it, and lose faith in him. He would bear the
burden, he said to himself. There should be no more repining or looking
back, Maude must never know; and so Jerry's chance was lost.

The next morning Arthur awoke with a racking headache. He was accustomed
to it, it is true; but this one was particularly severe.

'It's the cherries; no wonder; a quart of those sour things would turn
upside down any stomach,' Charles said, as he glanced at the empty tin
pail which was adorning an inlaid table, and then suggested a dose of
ipecac as a means of dislodging the offending cherries.

But Arthur declined the medicine. His stomach was well enough, he said.
It was his head which ached, and nothing would help that like the touch
of the cool little hands he had held in his the previous day. Charles
must go for Jerry--go at once, for he wanted her, and as when Arthur
wanted a thing he wanted it immediately, Charles was soon on his way to
the cottage in the lane, where he found the little girl under a tall
lilac bush, busy with the mud pies she was making, and talking to
herself, partly in English and partly in broken German, which she had
resumed since visiting the park.

'Seemed like something I had dreamed, when he talked like that, and I
could almost do it myself,' she said to Harold when describing the
particulars of her interview with Mr. Tracy, and her tongue fell
naturally into the language of her babyhood.

On hearing Charles' errand, her delight was unbounded.

'Iss. You'll let me go,' she cried, as she stood before Mrs. Crawford,
with the mud-spots on her hands and face; 'and you'll let me wear my
best gown now, and my white apron with the shoulder-straps, and my
morocco shoes, because this visiting.'

As Mrs. Crawford could see no objection to the plan, Jerry was soon
dressed, and on her way to the Park House, which seemed to her to be a
very palace, and until the day before a place to