how-house which Harold says
cost a hundred thousand dollars. Pity somebody besides the Peterkins did
not live there.'

And so, about twelve o'clock Jerrie walked up to the grand house of gray
stone, which, with its turrets, and towers, and immense arch over the
carriage drive in front of a side door, looked like some old feudal
castle, and flaunted upon its walls the money it had cost. Even the loud
bell which echoed through the hall like a town clock told of wealth and
show, as did the colored man who answered the summons, and bowing low to
Jerrie, held out a silver tray for her card.

'Nonsense, Leo!' Jerrie said, laughingly, for she had known the negro
all her life and played with him, too, at times, when they both went to
the district school. 'I have no card with me. Miss Ann Eliza has invited
me to lunch, and I have come. Tell her I am here.'

With another profound bow, Leo waved Jerrie into the reception-room, and
then started to deliver her message.

Seated upon one of the carved chairs, Jerrie looked about her curiously,
with a feeling that the half had not been told her, everything was so
much more gorgeous and magnificent than she had supposed. But what
impressed and at the same time oppressed her most was the height of the
walls from the richly inlaid floor to the gayly decorated ceiling
overhead. It made her neck ache staring up fourteen feet and a half to
the costly center ornament from which the heavy chandelier depended. All
the rooms of the old house had been low, and when Peterkin built the new
one, he made ample amends.

"I mean to lick the crowd," he said; and a man was sent to Collingwood,
and Grassy Spring, and Brier Hill, and lastly to Tracy Park, to take the
height of the lower rooms. Those at Tracy Park were found to be the
highest, and measured just twelve feet, so Peterkin's orders were to
"run 'em up--run 'em up fourteen feet, for I swan I'll get ahead of
'em."

So they were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake, half a foot
higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless and bare that the
ambitious man ransacked New York and Boston and even sent to London for
ornaments for his walls. Books were bought by the square yard, pictures
by the wholesale, mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and
sconces and tapestry and banners and screens and clocks and cabinets and
statuary, with every kind of furniture imaginable, from the costliest
rugs and carpets to the most exquisite