hen, as she heard no sound, she looked up
wonderingly, and asked:

'Ain't you going to say "for Christ's Sake?" grandma does.'

Arthur's face was a study with its mixed expression of surprise,
amusement, and self-reproach. He never prayed except it were in some
ejaculatory sentences wrung from him in his sore need, and the thought
of asking a blessing on his food had never occurred to him. But Jerry
was persistent.

'You must say "for Christ's sake,"' she continued, and, with his weak
brain all in a muddle, Arthur began what he meant to be a brief
thanksgiving, but which stretched itself into a lengthy prayer, fall of
the past and of Gretchen, whom he seemed to be addressing rather than
his Maker.

For a while Jerry listened reverently; then she looked up and moved
uneasily in the chair, and at last when the prayer had continued for at
least five minutes, she burst out impulsively:

'Oh, dear, do say "amen." I am so hungry!'

That broke the spell, and with a start Arthur came to himself, and said:

'Think you, Jerry, praying is a new business for me, and I do believe I
should have gone on forever if you had not stopped me. Now, what will
you have?'

He helped her to whatever she liked best, but could eat scarcely
anything himself. It was sufficient for him to watch Jerry sitting there
in Gretchen's chair and using Gretchen's plate, which every day for so
many years had been laid for her. Gretchen had not come. She would never
come, he feared, but with Jerry he did not feel half as desolate as when
alone, with only his morbid fancies for company. And he must have her
there, at least a portion of the time. His mind was made up on that
point, and when about four o'clock, Jerry said to him:

'I want to go now. Grandma said I was to be home by five,' she replied:

'Yes, I am going with you. I wish to see your grandmother. I am going to
drive you in the phaeton. How would you like that?'

Her dancing eyes told him how she would like it, and Charles was sent to
the stable with an order to have the little pony phaeton brought round
as soon as possible as he was going for a drive.

CHAPTER XIX.

ARTHUR'S PLAN

'Why, the madam is going to drive, too, and I've come to harness;
there'll be a row somewhere,' John said.

'Can't help it,' Charles replied, 'Mr. Arthur wants the phaeton, and
will have it for all of Madam.'

'Yes, I s'p'o' so. Wall, I'll go and tell her,' was John's rejoinder, as
he started f