"O Jerry," she said, "I'm awful sorry. You needn't ha' come over to-night." "She ain't gone, has she?" inquired Jerry, in a voice of perilous distinctness. "Don't speak so loud. She's got ears like a fox. No, but I could ha' put her off somehow. I never thought of your comin' over to-night." "Well, I thought of it," said Jerry. "I ain't seen your mother for quite a spell." "Oh, she's all right now. There! I feel awfully not to ask you in, but aunt Hill's ankle an' all--good-night." He turned away after a look at the bright knocker that, jumping out at him from the dusk, almost made it seem as if the door had been shut in his face. But he went crunching down the path, and Stella returned, to wash her hands at the sink and resume her moulding. "Law!" said aunt Hill, "your cheeks are 's red as fire. Who was it out there?" "Jerry Norton." Stella's voice sank, in spite of her. That unswerving gaze on her cheeks made her feel out in the world, in a strong light, for curiosity to jeer at. "Jerry Norton?" aunt Hill was repeating in a loud voice. "Well, I'll be whipped if it ain't Saturday night an' you've turned him away ag'in. What's got into you, Stella? I never thought you was one to blow hot an' blow cold when it come to a fellow like Jerry Norton. Good as gold, your mother says he is, good to his mother an' good to his sister, an' now he's took his aunt home to live with 'em." "I can't 'tend to callers when there's sickness in the house," Stella plucked up spirit to say, and her mother returned wonderingly,-- "Why, it ain't sickness exactly, aunt Hill's ankle ain't. I wish I could ha' got out there. I'd have asked him in." Before the next Saturday aunt Hill's ankle had knit itself up and she was gone. When Stella and her mother sat down to supper in their wonted seclusion, Stella began her deferred task. She was inwardly excited over it, and even a little breathless. It seemed incredible to her, still, that Jerry and she had parted, and it would, she knew, seem so to her mother when she should be told. She sat eating cup-cake delicately, but with an ostentatious relish, to prove the robustness of her state. "Mother," she began. "Little more tea?" asked Mrs. Joyce, holding the teapot poised. "No. I want to tell you somethin'." "I guess I'll have me a drop more," said Mrs. Joyce. "Nobody need to tell me it keeps me awake. I lay awake anyway." Stella took another cup-cake in bravado. "Mother," she said, "Jerry 'n' I've concluded to give it up." "Give what up?" asked Mrs. Joyce, finding she had the brew too sweet and pouring herself another drop. "Oh, everything! We've changed our minds." Mrs. Joyce set down her cup. "You ain't broke off with Jerry Norton?" "Yes. We broke it off together." "You needn't tell me 'twas Jerry Norton's fault." Mrs. Joyce pushed her cup from her and winked rapidly. "He's as good a boy as ever stepped, an' he sets by you as he does his life."