n the threshold of the goldsmith's
shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped for of getting rid of it.
She grasped at it before she had time to waver.

"I wonder if it's the very favor I was going to ask of you."

But he didn't take it up. He seemed hardly to hear her, as if his mind
was too much absorbed with quite another question--a question that the
next moment came out flat. "What was that Kerr doing here yesterday?"

She was taken aback, so far had her apprehension of Harry's jealousy
slipped into the background in the last twenty-four hours. But her
consciousness that Harry was not behaving well, even for a jealous man,
made her take it up all the more lightly.

"Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea--what anybody else would do
from four to six. What in the world gave you the idea that he was doing
anything extraordinary?"

"Well," he said, "you shouldn't do the sort of thing that makes you
talked about."

"'That makes me talked about'?" It made her pause in front of him.

"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I
drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge;
look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she,
'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated.
"That's a nice thing to hear."

Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly
tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of
her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without
apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had
taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at
Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had
meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that
he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.

She tried to laugh him out of it.

"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"

"It's all very well to say that--and you know I've never made a row
about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of _them_."

Her eyes narrowed and darkened.

"And you take it for granted I care for Mr. Kerr?"

"Oh, no, no!" He pushed his hand through his hair with an irascible
gesture. "But it's plain enough you like him--you women always like a
fellow that flourishes--but that's not the sort of man I care to see
hanging around my girl."

Flora stood leaning on the table, b