of indignation.

'The miserable, nasty, sneaking Tom!' she said, stopping short and
emphasizing each adjective with a stamp of her foot as if she were
trampling upon the offending Tom. 'I wish I had heard him. I'd have
scratched his eyes out! talking of you as if you were dirt! I hate him,
and I told him so the other day, and spit at him when he tried to kiss
me.'

'Kiss you! Tom Tracy kiss you!' Harold exclaimed, forgetting his own
grief in this insult to Jerry; for it seemed to him little less than
profanity for lips like Tom Tracy's to touch his little Jerry.

'No, he didn't, but he tried, right before that boy from Kentucky; but I
wriggled away from him, and bit him, too, and he called me a cat, and
said he guessed I wouldn't mind if _you_ or Dick St. Claire tried to
kiss me, and I shouldn't; but I'll fight _him_ and Bill Peterkin every
time. I wonder why all the boys want to kiss me so much!'

'I expect it is because you have just the sweetest mouth in the world,'
Harold said, stooping down and kissing the lips which seemed made for
that use alone.

This little episode had helped somewhat to quiet Harold's state of mind,
but did not change his resolve to speak to Mr. Tracy, and tell him that
he could not receive any more favors from his hands. He would, however,
wait until to-morrow, as Jerry bade him to.

'You will worry him so that he will be crazier than a loon at the
party,' she said, and so Harold waited, but started for the park the
next morning as soon as he thought Mr. Tracy would see him.

He had rung at the door of the rear hall, but as no one heard him he
ventured in, as he had sometimes done before, when sent for Jerry if it
rained, and ascending the stairs to the upper hall, knocked two or three
times at Arthur's door, first gently, and then louder as there came no
response.

'He cannot be there, and I must come again,' he thought as he retraced
his steps, reaching the door at the lower end of the hall just as Mrs.
Tracy came up the broad staircase on her way to her room.

As that day wore on, and the next, and the next, Harold began to care
less for Tom's insult, and to think that possibly he had been hasty in
his determination to decline Arthur's assistance, especially as he meant
to pay back every dollar when he was a man. He would at all events wait
a little, he thought, and so had made no further effort to see Mr.
Tracy, when Charles found him, and told he was wanted at the park house.