‘Isn’t it lovely, and won’t she be pleased!’ Maude kept saying, as she gave the room a last look and then started for home, charging Harold to be on time at the train, and to try and not look so tired.

Harold was very tired, for the constant strain of the last few weeks had told upon him, and he felt that he could not have gone on much longer, and that only for Maude’s constant enthusiasm and sympathy he should have broken down before the task was done.  It was not easy work, shingling roofs and nailing down floors, and painting ceilings, and every bone in his body ached, and his hands were calloused like a piece of leather, and his face looked tired and pale when he at last sat down to rest awhile before changing his working suit for one scarcely better, although clean and fresher, with no daubs of paint or patches upon it.

‘They don’t look first-rate, that’s a fact,’ he said to himself as he surveyed his pants, and boots, and hat, and thought what a contrast he should present to the elegant Tom and his other friends at the station.  ’But Jerrie won’t care a bit; she understands, or will, when she sees her new room.  How pretty it is!’ he added, as he stopped to look in and admire it.

A blind had swung open, letting in a flood of hot sunshine and as it was desirable to keep the room as cool as possible, Harold went in to close the shutter.  But something was the matter with both fastening and hinge, and he was fixing it when Maude drove up, telling him the train was late.

‘That’s lucky,’ he said, ‘for this blind is all out of gear;’ and it took so much time to fix and rehang it that the whistle was heard among the hills a mile away, just as he entered the victoria with Maude and started for the station upon a run.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE WALK HOME.

All the way from the station to the gate Harold was trying to think of something to say besides the merest commonplaces, and wondering at Jerrie’s silence.  She had seemed glad to see him, he had seen that in her eyes, and seen there something else which puzzled and troubled him, and he was about to ask her what it was when she stopped so abruptly, and said: 

’Why didn’t you come to Vassar?  Tom Tracy said you were shingling a roof, and Billy Peterkin said Maude was helping you.’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ Harold said, bursting into a laugh.  ’That is why you have been so stiff and distant, ever since we left the depot, that I could not touch you with a ten-foot pole.’

‘Well, I don’t care,’ Jerry replied, with a sob in her voice.  ’I was so disappointed, for I wanted you so badly.  Everybody had some friend there, but myself.  You don’t know how lonely I felt when I went on the stage and knew there was no home face looking at me in all that crowd.  I think you might have come any way.’

‘But, Jerrie,’ Harold said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, as they slowly walked on, ’wait a little before you condemn me utterly.  I wanted to come quite as much as you wanted to have me.  I remembered what a help it was to me when I was graduated to see your face in the crowd, and know by its expression that you were satisfied.’