He was
not afraid of the building, and often went there with Jerry, and sitting
with her on the table, told her again and again how he had found her
mother that wintry morning, and how funny she herself had looked in the
old carpet-bag, and so it is not strange that when Mr. Tracy asked her
where her mother died, she should answer, 'In the Tramp House,' although
she had acted a pantomime whose reality must have taken place under very
different circumstances.
'Of course your mother died in the Tramp House, and I have nothing with
which to reproach myself. I am altogether too morbid on the subject,'
Frank said, and he had decided that he was a pretty good sort of fellow,
after all, when at last Mrs. Crawford came in and he paid her for
Jerry's board.
It was a part of Frank's plan to save the money out of his own personal
expenses, so he smoked two cigars less each day and went without claret
for dinner, except on Sunday, and never touched champagne, and wore his
hats and coats until his wife said they were shabby and insisted upon
new ones. In this way he saved more than three dollars a week, but the
overplus was laid aside for the time when Jerry must necessarily cost
him more because she would be older. In some respects he was doing his
duty by the child, who, next to Harold and Mrs.
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