So great was her infatuation for the
man who had never shown her the slightest attention, that even his
flowers, though second-hand, and not intended for her, were everything
to her, and when she packed her trunk that night she put them carefully
away in many wrappings of paper, to be brought out at home in the
privacy of her own room, and kept as long as the least beauty or perfume
remained.
It was a merry party which the New York train carried to Shannondale the
next day, and Jerrie was the merriest and gayest of them all, bandying
jokes and jests, and coquetting pretty equally with the young men, until
neither Tom, nor Dick, nor Billy quite knew what he was doing or saying.
But always in her gayest moods, when her eyes were brightest and her wit
the keenest, there was in Jerrie's heart a thought of Harold, who had so
disappointed her, and a wonder as to the nature of the _job_ which had
been of sufficient importance to keep him from Vassar.
'Shingling a roof, and Maude is helping him,' Billy said, 'I wonder what
he meant?' she was thinking, when she heard Ann Eliza cry out, that the
towers of 'Le Bateau' were visible.
As she had not seen that wonderful structure since its completion, she
arose from her seat, and going to the window, looked out upon the
massive pile in the distance, looking, with its turrets, and towers, and
round projections, like some old castle rather than a home where people
could live and be happy.
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