'Take off that bonnet and let me look at you.'
She obeyed and stood before him with all her wealth of hair tumbling about her glowing face, and an eager, questioning expression in her blue eyes, which looked at him so fearlessly. Arthur knew perfectly well who she was, but something about her so dazed and bewildered him that for a moment he could not speak, but stared at her with the hungry, wistful look of one longing for something just within his reach, but still unattainable.
'Like you?' he replied. 'Yes. Why did you not come to me sooner?'
And, stooping, he kissed the cherry-stained mouth as he had never kissed a child before.
Sitting down upon the lounge, he took her in his lap and said to her again:
'Who are you, and where did you come from? I know your name is Jerry, which is a strange one for a girl, and I know you live with Mrs. Crawford, but before that night where did you live? Where did you come from?'
'Out of the carpet-bag in the Tramp House. I told you that once,' Jerry said. 'Harold found me. I am his little girl. He is out in the cherry tree, and said I must not come up, because you were crazy and would hurt me. You won't hurt me, will you? And be you crazy?'
'Hurt you? No,' he answered, as he parted the rings of her hair from her low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or not They say so, and perhaps I am, when my head is full of bumble-bees.'
'Oh--h!' Jerry gasped, drawing back from him. 'Can they get out? And will they sting?'
Arthur burst into a merry laugh, the first he had known since he came back to Shannondale. Jerry was doing him good. There was something very soothing in the touch of the little warm hands he held in his, and something puzzling and fascinating, too, in the face of the child. He did not think of a likeness to any one; he only knew that he felt drawn toward her in a most unaccountable manner, and found himself wondering greatly who she was.
'Harold told me there were pictures and marble people up here with nothing on, and everything, and that's why I comed--that and to bring you some cherries. I like pictures. Can I see them?' Jerry said.
'Yes, you shall see them,' Arthur replied; and he led her into the room where Gretchen's picture looked at them from the window.