lock, which Peterkin had set up in one of his towers,
struck for half-past ten, and Grace Atherton's carriage was rolling down
the avenue from the big dinner at the Park House.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE NEXT DAY.

Jerrie was astir the next morning almost as soon as the first robin
begin to sing under her window. She had left a blind open, and the red
beams of the rising sun fell upon her face and roused her from a dream
of Germany and what she meant to do there. Once fairly awake, Germany
seemed far away, as did the fancies of the previous night. The spell,
mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or whatever one chooses to call it, was
broken, and she was only Jerrie Crawford again, dressing herself rapidly
and noiselessly so as not to awaken her grandmother, who slept in the
room beneath hers.

'I shall get the start of her,' she said, as she donned a simple working
dress which had done her service during the summer vacations for three
successive years. 'I heard her telling Harold last night to have the
tubs and water ready early, for she had put off the Monday's washing
until I came home, as I was sure to bring a pile of soiled clothes. And
I have; but, my dear grandmother, your poor old twisted hands will not
touch them. What is a great strapping girl like me for, I'd like to
know, if it is not to wash her own clothes, and yours, too?' and Jerrie
nodded resolutely at the fresh young face in the mirror, which nodded
back with a smile of approbation of the _tout ensemble_ of the figure
reflected in the glass.

And truly it was a very pretty and piquant picture which she, made in
her neat calico dress, which, as it was three years old at least, was a
little too short for her, and showed plainly her red stockings and
high-heeled slippers, with the strap around her instep. Her sleeves were
short, for she had cut them off and arranged them in a puff above her
elbows to save rolling them up, and her white bib-apron was fastened on
each shoulder with a knot of blue ribbon, Harold's favorite color. She
had thoroughly brushed her beautiful wavy hair, and then twisting it
into a mass of curls had tucked it under a coquettish muslin cap, whose
narrow frill just shaded her lovely face. 'You look like a peasant
girl, and I believe you are a peasant girl, and ought to be working in
the fields of Germany this minute,' she said to herself with a mocking
courtesy, as she left the mirror and descended to the kitchen, where,
early as it was,