‘It is a pity he ever told her about them,’ the doctor said, as twice each day, morning and night, for four successive days, he came and looked upon her fever-stained cheeks, and counted her rapid pulse, and took her temperature, and listened to her strange talk; and then, with a shake of his head, drove over to Tracy Park and stood by poor little Maude’s couch, and looked into her death-white face, and counted her faint heartbeats, and tried in vain to find some word of encouragement for the stricken man, who looked about as much like death as the young girl so dear to him.  And every morning, on his way from the cottage to Tracy Park, the doctor saw under the pines two young men, Tom and Dick, seated upon the iron bench each whittling a bit of pine, which one was unconsciously fashioning into a cross and the other into a grave-stone.

Tom had found Dick there working at his cross, and, after a simple good-morning, had sat down beside him and whittled in silence upon another bit of wood until the doctor appeared on his way to Tracy Park.  Then the whittling ceased, and both young men arose, and, going forward, asked how Jerrie was.

’Pretty bad.  Hal oughtn’t to have gone, though I told him there was no danger.  We must telegraph if she gets worse,’ was the reply, as the doctor rode on.

Tom and Dick separated, and saw no more of each other until the next morning, when they went again, and whittled in silence under the pines until the doctor came in sight, when the same questions were asked and answered as on the previous day.

Billy never joined them, but sat under the butternut tree where Jerrie had refused him, for hours and hours watching the sluggish river, and wondering what the world would be to him if Jerrie were not in it.  Had Billy been with Tom and Dick, he could not have whittled as they did, for all the nerve power had left his hands, which lay helplessly in his lap, and when he walked he looked more like a withered old man than a young one of twenty-seven.

Maude was the first to rally—­her first question for Harold, her second for Jerrie—­and her father, who was with her, answered truthfully that Harold had not returned, and that Jerrie was sick and could not come to her.  He did not say how sick, and Maude felt no alarm, but waited patiently until Jerrie should appear.  For Maude, on her brass bedstead with its silken hangings, and every possible luxury around her, there were hired nurses and a mother’s care, with many kind inquiries, while it would seem as if every hand in town was stretched out to Jerrie, who was a general favorite.  Flowers and fruit and delicacies of every kind were sent to the cottage, carriage after carriage stopped before the door, offer after offer of assistance was made to Mrs. Crawford, while Nina and Marian Raymond were there constantly; and Billy went to Springfield for a chair in which to wheel his sister to the cottage, for she could not yet mount into the dog-cart; and Tom and Dick whittled on until the cross and the grave-stone were finished, and, with a sickly smile, Tom said to Dick: