e cherries. My sky was very
black those days, and but for you I am certain that I should long ere
this have been what you called me--a crazy man for sure, locked up
behind bars and bolts. My little Cherry has been all the world to me;
and though she is very grand, and tall, and stately now, I love to
remember her as the child in the sun-bonnet, clinging to the ladder, and
talking to the lunatic inside. That would make a fine picture, and it I
were an artist I would paint it some day. Perhaps Maude will. Poor
little Maude! Did I tell you that while she was absent she dabbled in
water-colors? and now she has what she calls a studio, where she
perpetrates the most atrocious daubs you ever saw. Poor Maude! She is
weak in the upper story, but is, on the whole, a nice girl, and very
pretty, too, with her black eyes, and brilliant color, and kittenish
ways. I did not care for her once, but we are great friends now, and she
is a comfort to me in your absence. I am afraid, though, that she is not
long for this world. Everything tires her, and she has grown so thin
that a breath might blow her away. I think it would kill Frank to lose
her. His life is bound up in hers; and he once said to me, either that
he had sold, or would sell, his soul for her. What do you suppose he
meant?'

Jerrie did not reply. The likeness in the mirror had disappeared as
Arthur grew more in earnest, and she listened more intently to what he
was saying of Maude, every word as he went on a blow from which she
shrank as from some physical pain.

'Yes,' Arthur continued, 'Maude is weak, mentally and physically, though
I believe she is trying hard to improve her wind, or rather, that young
man, Harold, is trying to improve it for her. He is at the house nearly
everyday, or she is at the cottage. But, hold on! I wasn't to tell, and
I haven't told--only he reads to her, sometimes outside when the weather
will admit, but oftener in her _studio_, where she talks to him of art,
and where I once saw him giving her a sitting while she tried to sketch
his face. A caricature, I called it, ridiculing it so much that she put
it away unfinished, and is now at work on some water-lilies he brought
her, and which are really very good. Mrs. Tracy is not pleased with
Harold's visits, and I once overheard her saying to Maude, "Why do you
encourage the attentions of that young man? why do you run after him so,
down there every day?" Hold on, again! What a tattler I am! Why do