flA 
 
 Misslerr 
 
 J
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ILL
 
 MISS JERRY
 
 m'fA
 
 MISS JERRY:::BY 
 
 ALEXANDER BLACK 
 
 WITH THIRTY-SEI/EN 
 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM 
 LIFE PHOTOGRAPHS 
 BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK MDCCCXCV
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 PREFACE 
 
 < nr > HE text of "Miss Jerry " was not originally 
 designed for print, but for oral delivery in 
 partnership -with the series of 250 photographs 
 from life, with which it formed what I have called 
 a "picture play. ' ' The original draft of the story 
 was but little longer than the reading version used 
 in public ; and although it seemed probable that I 
 might at some time arrange the story for book 
 publication, it was not until the unexpectedly defi 
 nite success of the picture play brought with it 
 repeated requests to print, that the availability of 
 the existing draft came into consideration at all. 
 It was urged that the colloquial, story-telling cast 
 which I had sought to give to the text, in view of 
 its use in oral delivery before audiences, could 
 not be regarded as disqualifying : but despite this 
 opinion and many kindly comments on the story, 
 as &itch, from critics and correspondents, it was 
 
 1782173
 
 PREFACE 
 
 impossible to prepare " Miss Jerry " for pub 
 lication -without certain changes, necessitated by 
 the fact that in the picture play I tell much of the 
 story -with the pictures. 
 
 And here it may not be out of place to explain 
 that " Miss Jerry ' ' was cast as a play is cast, and 
 the successive scenes photographed phase by phase 
 from the living people. The interiors, excepting 
 only the interior of Mr. Chauncey M. Depew's 
 private office at the Grand Central Station, are 
 fictitious ; that is to say, they were devised under 
 the skylight of a studio. In the street scenes I 
 introduced the backgrounds of real life, bringing 
 the fictitious action of the story against the actual 
 lineaments of the city In some instances the 
 pictures preceded the writing of the text, and in 
 others the text was modified, for the purposes of 
 the picture play, to bring about a more perfect 
 harmony between both than would have been pos 
 sible had the text been fixed, and the photography 
 a form of illustrating. 
 
 The 250 pictures prepared in this way are thrown 
 upon a sheet by the aid of the stereopticon, dissolv 
 ing one into another at the rate of three or four to 
 the minute, the oral story moving concurrently
 
 PREFACE 
 
 with the picture story as the eye thus receives it. 
 In such a plan much of description may be omit 
 ted from the reading version, since the pictures 
 to a great extent tell what the characters look 
 like and do, while the monologue concerns itself 
 more especially with what they think and say. The 
 illustrations to this volume represent a selection 
 from the series of pictures, with two scenes the 
 first talk between Jerry and Pink, and the final 
 scene between Jerry and Hamilton approximately 
 complete. 
 
 In this triangular partner ship between the art of 
 fiction, the art of the tableau vivant and the sci 
 ence of photography, I have sought to test certain 
 possibilities of illusion, with this aim always be 
 fore me, that the illusion should not, because it 
 need not and could not safely, be that of photo 
 graphs from an acted play, nor that of an artist' s 
 illustrations, but the illusion of reality. If it is 
 the function of art to translate nature, it is the 
 privilege of photography to transmit nature. Thus, 
 I have sought to illustrate art with life. 
 
 I think that I may be pardoned for expressing 
 in this place my gratitude to those who, in the 
 heat- of the hottest of hot summers, underwent
 
 PREFACE 
 
 the discomforture of participation in the making 
 of the first picture play. I -wish to make grateful 
 acknowledgment to that wittiest of orators and 
 most gracious of wits, Mr. Depew ; to Official 
 Weather Forecaster Elias B. Dunn, who since 
 the interview on the top of the Equitable building 
 has been translated to that " higher tower to the 
 south," and to Superintendent Martin of the 
 great bridge. For assistance in casting the story 
 I am indebted to the President of the American 
 Academy of the Dramatic Arts, Mr. Franklin S. 
 Sargent. 
 
 ALEXANDER BLACK,
 
 CHARACTERS OF THE STORY: 
 
 GERALDINE HOLBROOK, the Princess of Panther Mine. 
 
 MRS. REMSEN-HOLT, a Young Club Woman. 
 
 GRACIE DEMOND, the Rose of the Rockies. 
 
 OLIVIA PRATTSBY, a Retired Bud. 
 
 Miss DOROTHY WALSH, a Social Favorite. 
 
 Miss MAUD RUTHERFORD, of a very good family. 
 
 MRS. DYCKMAN, who gives a ball. 
 
 THE WRITER OF THE LETTER. 
 
 KATE, a Servant. 
 
 MR. RICHARD HOLBROOK, of the Panther Mine. 
 
 MR. WALTER HAMILTON, of the New York Daily Dynamo. 
 
 J. SYLVESTER WARD, Pres. of the Long Creek Mine Co. 
 
 " PINK" LOPER, of the Mammoth Museum. 
 
 FREDERICK PRENTISS, a New Bear. 
 
 MR. DYCKMAN, husband of Mrs. Dyckman. 
 
 THE ENGLISH CRITIC. 
 
 THE WAITER OF THE MONASTERY. 
 
 OLD PRATTSBY, who still insists upon dancing. 
 
 TIME : WINTER AND SPRING OF 1893-4. 
 SCENE : NEW YORK CITY.
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 1 
 
 THE letter that Richard Holbrook had re 
 ceived from Colorado contained some 
 bad news. It was one of those letters 
 which when you read them twice sound worse 
 the second time. The cloud of approaching 
 disaster had fallen upon the Panther Mine. 
 There seemed no longer to be any hope. 
 
 When he went into the West with his 
 young wife, after the business crash of '73, Hol 
 brook had no romantic ideas of fortune mak 
 ing. He had expected a hard fight; and he 
 found it. Harder to bear than the stress of 
 those early struggles had been the stroke of 
 death that left the young miner alone with his 
 baby girl. 
 
 Geraldine ! She was the only girl in the 
 county then. They called her the Princess of 
 Panther Mine.
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 For her sake he had regretted the rough 
 life at the mines and the cow camps. For her 
 sake, and for the sweet memory of that brave 
 
 young wife, he had performed prodigies of 
 labor, and beside the evening lamp he had 
 planned the child's lessons for the following 
 day. 
 
 How he had missed Geraldine, and how 
 the camp had missed her, when she went 
 away to the academy!
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 On returning to New York, after spending 
 fifteen years beyond the Mississippi, he had 
 taken a house in one of those quiet cross 
 streets just north of Washington Square. The 
 elevated railroad rattled across one end of the 
 thoroughfare, and from the opposite direction, 
 in subdued echoes, came the roar of Broadway. 
 But West Tenth Street, almost staidly dull, al 
 ways had the air of scorning to listen to these 
 vulgar noises. 
 
 And now, after five years in New York, 
 Holbrook began to feel the necessity of mak 
 ing some radical changes in his way of living. 
 He flattered himself that he had kept from 
 Geraldine a knowledge of the awkward situ 
 ation in his New York investments within the 
 past year. Yet it was not possible much 
 longer to conceal from her the distressing 
 truth, and this brought a bitterness that nothing 
 else could have contributed to the crisis. It was 
 hard to confront her with adversity ; as hard, 
 it seemed to him, as if she had been less cer 
 tain to bear it with cheerfulness. 
 
 When she surprised him in his painful rev 
 erie he started guiltily, slipped the letter into 
 
 3
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 his pocket, and muttered some commonplace 
 about being late for the office. But she read 
 the new trouble in his face. 
 
 "Father," she said, "why don't you tell 
 me all about everything?" 
 
 "Oh, never mind about everything, Jerry. 
 Don't bother your head about me." 
 
 And he kissed her and went out. 
 
 She saw the Colorado postmark on the en 
 velope that lay upon the table. 
 4
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " So," she thought, "there is trouble at the 
 mine, too ! " 
 
 The thought of trouble did not daze her. 
 Her whole training had fostered her self-re 
 liance, strengthened her for emergencies, and 
 at the first signs of distress which her father 
 had shown some months before, she had per 
 mitted herself to think again of an early ambi 
 tion to do something in the world on her 
 own account. 
 
 Her father was not an old man by any means, 
 but his health was broken, and if disaster should 
 actually come he could never fight the battle over 
 again. " It is my turn now," she thought. There 
 seemed to be nothing in the way but his pride, 
 and she was confident of overcoming that ob 
 stacle. 
 
 The thought made her cheerful. "I will go 
 to-day," she was thinking. " I will go and meet 
 the world on a new footing. And it will be bet 
 ter to go before the trouble grows any worse." 
 
 It surprised her to find how easily she had 
 
 persuaded herself to believe that her resolution 
 
 w.as entirely rational. If she realized the extent 
 
 to which she was using the suspicion of ap- 
 
 5
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 preaching trouble as an excuse for entertaining 
 an ambitious idea, the suggestion did not seem to 
 be disqualifying. 
 
 A noise in the hall made the girl turn, and at 
 the door of the library appeared Kate, the maid, 
 her face betraying unmistakable excitement. 
 
 "There's a pirate in the hall, Miss Holbrook! " 
 
 "A what?" 
 
 "A pirate, Miss. Shure he has long hair, an' 
 a great hat, an' all of him is quare. An' it's 
 yourself he is askin' for, Miss; but 
 
 " Did he give you any name ? " 
 
 "An' he says, 'tell her Pink,' he says, ' Pink,' 
 an' I didn't howld the rest of it, Miss." 
 
 " Pink!" cried Geraldine. "Not Pink Loper?" 
 
 "The same, I think, Miss." 
 
 Geraldine was about to follow the girl into the 
 hall, when the strange figure of a man appeared 
 at the door a man of wild appearance, suggest 
 ing the second heavy villain in a Western melo 
 drama, who lounged in with a strange mixture 
 of assurance and diffidence in his manner, and 
 who drawled, " I guess this is Jerry." 
 
 "Yes, it is!" exclaimed the girl. "And is 
 this you, Pink ?"she added, extending her hand, 
 6
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 which the man, to the distress of the maid, 
 grasped fervently. With increased astonish 
 ment Kate heard the "pirate" say, "Well, I'll 
 
 be hanged if I'd knowed yer, Miss Jerry, you've 
 got to be such a woman! " 
 
 "But, Pink," demanded Geraldine, scanning 
 Pink's buckskin coat, leather breeches and som 
 brero, "what on earth are you doing in this 
 rig ? " 
 ~"Rig?" repeated Pink. "Advertisin' the 
 
 7
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 show, I guess. Anyhow, I ain't got no other 
 hat that's fit to wear just about now. I'll have 
 t' tell yer about it. But shoot me! I can't git 
 
 used t' this bein' you! can't hardly believe it! " 
 "And you look so funny, Pink! Worse than 
 
 Charley Allen used to." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose I do. But I'm right in this 
 
 now. I I suppose y' heard about my gettin' 
 
 married to Mary ? " 
 
 " Yes, soon after I went away."
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "An' y' know what kind of a shot Mary 
 was ?" 
 
 ' ' Yes, indeed. A much better shot than cook. " 
 
 " Well, somehow she got it inter 'er head to 
 go inter a show, and we got over to Denver and 
 then to Omaha; an' me an' her got up a shoot- 
 in' act a regular museum act, y' know an' 
 Mary's a corker, 'n no mistake! An' I can make 
 a pretty good stagger myself. Of course it's 
 dead easy at four or five yards, but we chuck a 
 
 9
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 great bluff, an' it goes. Anyhow, we was at 
 Chicago durin' the Fair, an' now we're on the 
 Bowery down at the Mammoth. I had your 
 address all the time from Parker, an' always in 
 tended t' look y' up if I ever come to New 
 York." 
 
 "And is this why you let your hair grow so 
 long ? " 
 
 "Sure! An' this is why I wear this hat; an' 
 this is why I wear this hull business. Great 
 fake, ain't it? It's an ad for the show; but I 
 did feel kinder queer tacklin' your door bell." 
 
 "And does your wife wear 
 
 "Not much! She's got a good fake for the 
 show, but she wouldn't wear nothin' but stylish 
 clothes on the street, an' when she's got 'er 
 war-paint on, Mary's a peach! She's got very 
 high toned lately. She's a remarkable woman." 
 Pink paused for a moment. " Y' know I'm 
 called Mortimer on the bills Mortimer De Mond 
 and she's Gracie. Y' know how it goes the 
 De Monds, Gracie and Mortimer. Maybe y' seen 
 the show, an' didn't think about it bein' us ?" 
 
 "No," said Geraldine, "I never saw your 
 show."
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " Y' oughter; its great! Mary used to be the 
 Pearl o' the Plains, then the Sylph o' the Sierras. 
 Now she's the Rose o' the Rockies. Yes, she's a 
 remarkable woman." 
 
 "I wonder if you remember, Pink, that Mary 
 is the first woman I ever remember seeing ? " 
 
 "Well, y' got over it." 
 
 "I was a little mite of a girl who didn't re 
 member her mother, and who had grown big 
 enough to run around on her own account, to 
 watch the round-ups and ride a horse 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Pink, "I've seen yer ride 
 a broncho like a young buck when yer wasn't 
 bigger'n a minute." 
 
 " And I had grown up that way, seeing plenty 
 of men and cattle, but never a woman, until one 
 day in a party coming over the hills to the new 
 camp I saw a being in skirts riding a mule. She 
 was a young woman, dressed in blue calico and 
 wearing a sun-bonnet; and I remember asking 
 father if he thought I would ever grow up to 
 look as pretty as that. Yes," pursued Geraldine, 
 as Pink turned his eyes toward her, " and that 
 was Mary Kimes." 
 
 & I wish I'd got out of it as easy as you
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 did," said Pink, staring absently before him. 
 
 Geraldine dared to laugh at him. "Why, 
 
 Pink, you don't seem to be happy about Mary." 
 
 "Well, I ain't altogether," returned Pink, 
 "that's a fact. She's too remarkable a woman 
 for me. An' I can tell yer, Jerry, if I ever was 
 bereaved, an' got a good, square chance to marry 
 again, yer can gamble on it, I wouldn't take up 
 next time with a dead shot." 
 
 " But Pink, you are in no danger of getting 
 
 12
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 shot, are you?" demanded Jerry, with an ill- 
 concealed twinkle. 
 
 " Probably I ain't ; but it makes me nervous. 
 
 
 She's a woman that kin git mad quick as light- 
 nin' and y' never kin give 'er any talk." 
 
 Jerry said she remembered something about 
 her nearly killing a man for saying that she was 
 the worst cook in Colorado. 
 
 "That's it; an' you never know when she 
 might make a thunderin' big fool of 'erself. 
 '3
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 How's Mr. Holbrook ? " asked Pink, changing 
 the subject; and the two rambled off into remi 
 niscent talk, in which Pink took a grim delight, 
 that expressed itself for the most part in an ab 
 sorbed attention, and a nervous movement under 
 his straggling mustache. 
 
 " Pink! " cried Geraldine, in a burst of stirring 
 recollection, "do you remember the day I fell 
 out of the bucket near the bottom of the shaft, 
 and how you and Miles brought me out ? and 
 how the Creeper cried when he thought I was 
 killed ? And do you remember the day the 
 English lord came to see the camp and asked 
 who I was, and you said ' that's the Princess of 
 Panther Mine ' ? " 
 
 "Yes, I do; an' I remember the day that Banks 
 was shot, that you got a hole in yer hat for 
 tryin' t' tell Banks that Thorp was gunnin' for 
 Mm." 
 
 " I had almost forgotten that." 
 
 "Yer come mighty near not bein' able t' re 
 member it. But that wasn't the only close call 
 yer had." 
 
 "And of course you remember the day I got 
 into a corner of the corral and climbed up there 
 14
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 to escape the cattle and stood there scream 
 ing 
 
 " Yes, yer did yell." 
 
 " And calling for some one to get me down, 
 and all the cattle in the world seeming to be 
 jammed right there ready to trample me to death, 
 and the Boston man dashing for me just in 
 time ? And you remember the day of the riot over 
 the Webster gang, how you and Wilkinson, and 
 father, and I were perched above the cutting 
 
 '5
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 when the crowd swept by within a few yards of 
 us, yelling and shooting right and left; and how 
 father fell back with a bullet in his shoulder, 
 while I crouched there beside him crying and 
 holding fast to that miserable little dog? And 
 the winter before, Pink will you ever forget 
 the great six days' storm and the burying of the 
 camp ? " 
 
 " I remember that every time I get on a large 
 hunger." 
 
 " How white the world was when we caught 
 a glimpse of it ! It all comes back the days of 
 worry, the gloom of the men, father's queer look 
 of distress as he watched me; the discussion as 
 to reaching the other camp, and my getting on 
 the snowshoes and being lifted up to start out 
 on the journey with a long rope fastened about 
 my waist. How delighted and excited I was! 
 You remember the slope there, Pink just to the 
 north of the camp ? " 
 
 "Yes; an' you pickin' yer way down like a 
 sparrer." 
 
 " I was so light, you see, that I could go where 
 none of you dared venture; and you were all 
 watching as long as you possibly could until I 
 16
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 had scrambled slowly along over the slope and 
 had gone down beyond the low ridge right 
 over there " 
 
 " Yes, I know, like I was lookin' at it now." 
 "And then father tugged at the line because 
 he was afraid I had gone through the crust of the 
 snow until I came in sight again screaming to 
 him to let me go ; and they gave me more rope, 
 until 
 
 ^' Until yer brought back word from the other 
 '7
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 camp, the best news that a crowd of men with a 
 lonesome feelin' inside ever got on the face of 
 this earth." 
 
 The talk was interrupted by the street door 
 bell, and the appearance of a young woman who 
 came in with the air of a person who is a fre 
 quent caller, and who did not disguise her aston 
 ishment at the presence of the other visitor. 
 
 Pink acknowledged the introduction with his 
 best bow, and said " that he must go now, and 
 that he would come in again." 
 
 " I shall be glad to see you, Pink," said Geral- 
 dine in parting, ' ' and bring Mrs. Loper with you. " 
 
 Mrs. Remsen-Holt heard the explanation with 
 an expression of countenance indicating that if 
 she had been surprised she might have known 
 better. "It's just like you, Jerry," she said; 
 "and it's a wonder to me after all that fuzzy 
 Western life of yours, that you haven't been 
 visited by more desperadoes and rough riders of 
 the rocky road." 
 
 "It was a real delight to meet Pink again," 
 
 Geraldine said. " I wouldn't have missed him 
 
 for anything. And besides, Pink isn't so very 
 
 wild. His long hair is for revenue only, and 
 
 18
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 I assure you that he is as good-hearted as his 
 hair is long." 
 
 "I just ran in," resumed Mrs. Holt, " to tell 
 you that we are organizing a Municipal Govern 
 ment Club, and that 
 
 " Another club ? " 
 
 "Yes, an afternoon club, you know; and we 
 are going to study taxation, and street cleaning, 
 and primaries; and Mr. Roosevelt has promised 
 to speak at the first regular meeting. Everybody 
 is flighted. It will be a great success ; and it's 
 never been done, you know." 
 
 " And to think," sighed Jerry, tragically, " that 
 I had hoped so confidently to save you ! Mrs. 
 Holt, this is simply debauchery ! " 
 
 "Jerry ! you are so amusing." 
 
 "All the same, Mrs. Holt, I look upon you as 
 a pitiable victim of the club habit. It's an awful 
 appetite when once it fastens itself upon you. 
 You start in with one or two clubs a week ; then 
 you have to take one every day, and after a while 
 two a day is the least you can get along with. 
 If I weren't on my way out now 
 
 "Jerry ! will you stop and listen ?" 
 
 "No, I mus'n't, Mrs. Holt. I've reformed. 
 
 '9
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 I don't think I was born for the frivolous life 1 
 have been trying to lead here in New York. 1 
 like to frivol, too; it would be lots of fun to 
 study municipal government, but 1 must get 
 down to something serious." 
 
 Mrs. Holt smiled. " The idea of your settling 
 down is really droll, Jerry. I should be very 
 sorry to see you become sedate; and you have 
 seemed a bit serious lately for you. The Mu 
 nicipal Government Club is just what you need 
 to brighten you up. I never forgot what my 
 first club did for me. You know I was fretful 
 and peevish, and complained so much, that Papa 
 said : ' Fanny, you'll have to either get married 
 or keep a diary.' But I didn't do either. I just 
 joined a club, and it simply saved me. Of course 
 when I did get married, clubs became an abso 
 lute necessity." 
 
 "I suppose so," said Jerry; "but I think I shall 
 worry along with my eight or ten until I have 
 your better excuse. Which way are you go 
 ing?" 
 
 Mrs. Holt was too busy a woman now-a-days 
 to waste words in such a matter. " But I shan't 
 let you bury yourself," she said, as they went out.
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 A few minutes later Jerry was on an elevated 
 train scurrying in the direction of the City Hall. 
 The plan which had formed itself in her mind 
 had begun to seem like a very daring one. As 
 that plan included an undertaking on her own 
 account, without any advice or assistance, it was 
 one that had a natural fascination for a girl of her 
 training. 
 
 As she crossed City Hall Park it occurred to 
 her that people who might hear of it would be 
 inclined to say that it was just like Jerry Holbrook 
 a thought that both amused her and urged her 
 to hope that it might not turn out awkwardly 
 altogether. It was an entirely creditable thing, 
 she had thought, to determine to enter journal 
 ism, and to do so without letter of introduction, 
 or any other influence of the kind. But she had 
 felt much more comfortable going down the 
 Panther Mine in a bucket than going up the Dy 
 namo Building in an elevator ; and when she 
 had advanced so far as one of those paradoxical 
 doors that tell you the entrance is somewhere 
 else, she began to feel a little sorry that her 
 scheme had made it absolutely necessary for her 
 to-go alone. For a moment she thought of turn-
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 ing and catching the elevator on its way down ; 
 in another she had opened the right door. 
 
 The guardian of the right door was one of those 
 boys that bloom in newspaper offices and no 
 where else on the surface of the globe; a boy 
 precociously versed in the ways of the world, 
 equally familiar with the tariff and the prize-ring, 
 tingling with the latest impulses of the English 
 language, and terrible in his superhuman self- 
 possession; a boy to admire and to fear; a boy 
 who inspires a liking without affection, yet whom 
 no one likes any less because of an occasional 
 yearning to kick him down stairs. 
 
 When Miss Jerry came in the boy asked her, 
 without looking up, whom she wished to see. 
 Of course Jerry didn't know whom she wished 
 to see, and the boy didn't appear to be listening 
 when she explained her errand as awkwardly as 
 people do when challenged to explain anything 
 to a remorseless boy ; but he said at last that he 
 guessed she had better see Mr. Hamilton, the 
 City Editor, anyway. 
 
 The City Editor was a younger man than Jerry 
 had expected to see. She had met young re 
 porters, but had always fancied an editor as a
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 man who had grown old enough to be tired of 
 knocking round out-of-doors. 
 This City Editor was young, but if he had been 
 
 eighty-three he could not have waited with more 
 severe repose for Jerry to begin, or have pre 
 pared a more judicial countenance while she 
 explained, clumsily and haltingly, that she wanted 
 to be a newspaper writer. 
 
 When she anticipated his question and said 
 that she had never written a line for a daily 
 23
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 newspaper in her life, she fancied that she saw a 
 twinkle of amusement in the City Editor's eyes, 
 and the suspicion did not please her at all. 
 When he asked her bluntly what sort of work 
 she thought of doing, she began to wonder 
 whether he was not a brute, young as he was. 
 "I am willing to write about anything," she 
 said, catching again the irritating glimmer of a 
 smile, "I am willing to write about anything 
 but society." 
 
 The City Editor looked as if he did not think 
 any less of her for this prejudice. "And I am 
 so tired of reading about women," Jerry added, 
 "that I would rather not write about them in 
 particular; you know what I mean." 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes, " said the City Editor, ' ' I know what 
 you mean." And then he undertook to tell her 
 that general newspaper writing required con 
 siderable experience, that the rough and tumble 
 of reporting and the preparation of special stories 
 was not exactly the sort of thing that a young 
 girl was usually fitted for. 
 
 " But you have women reporters," she urged. 
 
 This he admitted, adding that some of them 
 had rather a hard time of it. 
 24
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "But I am not afraid of anybody," she de 
 clared; and the City Editor laughed outright. 
 "Perhaps not in the daytime," he said. "But 
 think of the night. One of our women writers 
 has just been going through the police lodging- 
 houses at two o'clock in the morning. How 
 would you like that?" 
 
 "I wouldn't like it," said Jerry quietly, "but 
 I would go if I had to. " 
 
 At this the City Editor leaned back in his chair 
 again. " You are hard to frighten." 
 
 "Oh, please don't try 'to frighten me," Jerry 
 said, "for I am sure I should wear out your 
 patience. I simply can 't get frightened. I feel 
 quite ashamed of myself." 
 
 The City Editor laughed again. " I shan't try 
 any more," he said. Then he attempted to be 
 solemn again, and not to notice how pretty she 
 was, and to remember, and to comment upon 
 the fact, that there was no position open on the 
 staff; but his speech didn't go very well. It 
 ended by his suggesting that she try her hand at 
 some practical form of writing and submit it. 
 "You might write a special story for the Sunday 
 paper." 
 
 25
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Perhaps because he regarded the talk as prac 
 tically at an end, or because he wished to soften 
 the edge of his not altogether symmetrical sever 
 ity, the City Editor caught up a scrap of paper 
 from his desk and said, lightly, " You will under 
 stand, now, that if you were an old hand and a 
 man I might have had to send you up to inter 
 view this fellow Ward, the mining genius, who 
 is just on from Colorado. But 
 
 "Colorado!" cried Jerry, "and the mines! 
 Why I grew up in a Colorado mine! I know 
 mines better than than anything else in the 
 world! I wish you happened to think that I 
 might go to this mining genius. Suppose 
 
 The City Editor despised his own weakness, 
 but he permitted himself to listen, and to believe 
 that this was not entirely absurd under the cir 
 cumstances. His firmness was the more shaken 
 when he had permitted himself to ask something 
 about Jerry's Western life. He was seized by an 
 unprofessional curiosity to see what such a girl 
 would make of such a situation, and even per 
 suaded himself that the result might be distinctly 
 interesting. Then he actually set about planning 
 the interview which she was to undertake. 
 26
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "I don't suppose," she said, "that there is any 
 other way except to go right to the hotel." 
 "No, I think not," replied Hamilton, search 
 
 ing her face for some sign of dismay at this; 
 "and we must have it for to-morrow morning's 
 paper if he is in town. Ward has made a great 
 hit by the introduction of some new machinery, 
 and if I mistake not, he is on here to arrange some 
 big mining scheme. There is a good story there 
 iyou can get him to talk." 
 27
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "Get him to talk!" The words echoed 
 strangely in Jerry's thoughts as she went down 
 in the elevator and across City Hall Park; and 
 that afternoon when this young woman who 
 was not afraid of anybody asked at the desk of 
 the Fifth Avenue Hotel for Mr. J. Sylvester Ward, 
 her heart was thumping in a disgraceful way. 
 
 It so happened, however, that Mr. J. Sylvester 
 Ward was out of town, and Jerry left the corri 
 dor glad and sorry that the case stood that way ; 
 sorry that there should be some doubt as to get 
 ting the interview; glad that she should have a 
 little longer time for preparation. 
 
 When she came to think the thing over at 
 home, she could not decide that she really had 
 been rash. If she was to go into journalism she 
 meant to go by the rough road of the ordinary 
 beginner. Going to interview a strange man at 
 a big hotel certainly was a rough piece of road. 
 It was not exactly the sort of thing she would 
 have picked out to begin on, but it was the 
 chance that came to hand, and if the awkward 
 ness arose chiefly from the fact that she was a 
 woman, she resented the awkwardness all the 
 more on that account. 
 
 28
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 When she asked her father that afternoon if he 
 remembered that this was the night of the Dyck- 
 man ball, he looked so distressed for a moment 
 that she was tempted to throw over the whole 
 question of going to the ball; but she knew that 
 it could not be best for him to stay at home. 
 Even if there had to be some changes in their 
 attitude toward social life as they had permitted 
 themselves to know that life, it would be better 
 for him that the break should not come any 
 sooner than the need. 
 
 "I see that you want me to go," Holbrook 
 said, looking down at her in the quiet way that 
 had come over him. 
 
 "Yes, I want you to go, Dick," she replied, 
 using the name he permitted her to make a 
 whimsical use of. "I'm not going to let you 
 stay around and mope." 
 
 " Have I been moping?" he asked, seriously. 
 
 "No, Dick; but I don't want you to begin. 
 And I warn you that at the first signs of worry I 
 shall sentence you to the giddiest orgies I can 
 find." 
 
 And so father and daughter went to the Dyck- 
 man ball that night. 
 
 29
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 The Dyckmans were not exactly society peo 
 ple, but their entertainments were excellent in 
 quality, being neither lavish nor meagre, of the 
 sort that draw out representatives of both the 
 older and the younger sets, and where, as Perry 
 said, they served suppers at which you could 
 actually get something to eat. 
 
 Dyckman himself was a little man with a large, 
 red smile, who had made considerable money in 
 Harlem real estate. He was a thin little man 
 so thin that, as Perry said, his full-dress suit was 
 only half full. Utterly incapable of the social 
 graces, he delighted in the popularity of his wife, 
 an amiable and ambitious woman of substantial 
 person. 
 
 The gathering at the Dyckman's on this occa 
 sion was one of those at which everyone meets 
 precisely the people he expects to meet, and at 
 which everyone appears to derive a species of 
 satisfaction from this circumstance. Altogether 
 it was an interesting company. There was a 
 proper representation of the younger set Bar- 
 rington and his bride, Eddie Van Cowen, the 
 Sibley girls, who were playfully spoken of as the 
 Westchester twins, and some eminently solid 
 30
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 people from Washington Heights. The Lexing 
 ton brothers, who had recently fallen heirs to the 
 great Gibraltar apartment houses, were conspic 
 uously present. Perry, who was always saying 
 mean things, applied to them the label of the Gib 
 raltar Flats. There was little Milkworth, a sadly 
 uninteresting type of young man too young to 
 have a past, too stupid to have a future ; and 
 Mrs. Caswell, who had the reputation of being 
 the crudest of all the rich widows in New York. 
 Three or four men were always certain to be 
 found hovering around Dorothy Walsh, who dis 
 played great precocity in dividing her attention 
 and her conversation into microscopic fragments. 
 
 Mrs. Remsen-Holt brought an English critic 
 who was studying American society and politics 
 on a six weeks' trip; who took the Municipal 
 Government Club seriously, and who was always 
 asking whether this, that and the other thing 
 were "characteristic, you know." Mrs. Holt had 
 studied with great labor the English angular 
 handwriting, and she enjoyed keenly the English 
 critic's delightfully angular enunciation. 
 
 Then there was old Prattsby, over sixty, 
 brat notoriously willing to dance, a frivolity 
 3'
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 which his daughter regarded as entirely incon 
 gruous in a gentleman of his years. But Miss 
 Prattsby took life very seriously. She had reached 
 an age when it was awkward to remember the 
 introduction of telephones, rash to remember 
 Black Friday, and positively indecent to remem 
 ber the War. She was a sort of feminine Diog 
 enes who went about with the lamp of higher 
 education, sadly searching for an honest man. 
 
 Miss Jerry, who came in a charming ball-gown 
 that once had robed her stately great-grand 
 mother, had been presented to the English critic 
 and was listening to his queries and comments, 
 when Mrs. Dyckman came up with her cousin, 
 Mr. Ward, of Colorado. 
 
 Jerry, perhaps, visibly started at the name. 
 
 "You are not Mr. J. Sylvester Ward?" she 
 asked in her direct way. 
 
 "Oh, yes I am ! " replied Ward, with a free 
 laugh, "unless you like James S. Ward better." 
 
 " I happened to hear your name mentioned to 
 day," said Jerry. If Ward wondered why she 
 flushed he did not lament the effect. "And this," 
 Jerry was thinking, with a confused sensation, 
 "this is the man 1 was sent to interview ! " 
 32
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "I have just been talking to your father," 
 Ward was saying a few minutes later, "and 
 telling him that I had heard both of him and of 
 
 you from the people out there at Long Creek." 
 Jerry hoped that the reports were not entirely 
 
 unfavorable. 
 
 "On the contrary," returned Ward, "people 
 
 in that part of the country bank high on your 
 
 father, and I received the impression that you 
 
 were a kind of Bret Harte heroine." 
 33
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Jerry laughed. "That is a very indefinite de 
 scription. I shouldn't know how to live up to 
 it" 
 
 "I'm glad," pursued Ward, "to get over here 
 out of the crowd. The crush of people worries 
 me. Of course you know I haven't done much 
 of this society sort of thing for nearly a dozen 
 years, and I feel like a cat in Leadville the at 
 mosphere is too rare for me." 
 
 "I've become accustomed to it," Jerry said 
 "I mean to society; but for a long time I was 
 homesick for the camps. I still wish at times 
 for a wild ride, for the swing in the shaft, for the 
 roaring song of the men. And sometimes when 
 I find myself in a polite drawing-room dance I 
 wonder what would happen if I should break 
 into a regular mining jig before the whole com 
 pany." 
 
 "I came from Philadelphia to-night," said 
 Ward, with an unreadable smile, "but I would 
 travel a much greater distance to see you do 
 that." 
 
 " It is not likely to happen. You see the in 
 fluence of heredity. I was born here in the East, 
 of Eastern parents, and it is quite natural, I sup- 
 34
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 pose, that I should relapse under the first favoring 
 conditions and become tame again." 
 
 "It is too bad," assented Ward, affecting to 
 feel depressed by the thought; "but are you 
 really entirely tame?" 
 
 " Oh, no! At least my friends seem to regard 
 me sometimes as not quite perfectly manageable." 
 
 He thought this was hopeful. "And I sup 
 pose," he added, "that is what my cousin meant 
 just now when she spoke of you as delightfully 
 original." 
 
 " Did that excite your curiosity?" 
 
 "No my reverence." 
 
 Presently Ward was talking about his electric 
 drills, his mining schemes and the chances of 
 silver working in view of the Repeal Bill. "Of 
 course," he remarked some minutes later, "we 
 are keeping very quiet about the combine just 
 now." 
 
 " And yet you are telling me all about it." 
 
 "Oh, well, you know what I mean ; we are 
 keeping it out of the papers." 
 
 " I see," said Jerry reflectively. 
 
 "And besides, you are a privileged person; 
 -you belong to the mining fraternity, and if I mis- 
 35
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 take not, your father will be interested in this 
 thing." 
 
 ' ' Aren't you trying to justify yourself for telling 
 
 me something that you shouldn't have told ? " 
 "Well, I'm open to conviction as to whether 
 
 my confidence has been misplaced." 
 They were both laughing at this when Fred 
 
 Prentiss came hurrying up. "Miss Holbrook! 
 
 I've been hunting for you everywhere. They're 
 
 dancing, and this is my waltz." 
 36
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Ward did not look as if he were at all grate 
 ful to Prentiss. As Jerry disappeared with the 
 younger man he remembered that he had prom 
 ised his cousin that he would ask Miss Olivia to 
 dance. 
 
 The incident will explain the frame of mind in 
 which Miss Geraldine Holbrook found herself on 
 the following day. Unless she abandoned her 
 commission from the Dynamo, and thus confessed 
 defeat at the very threshold of her undertaking, 
 she was obliged to confront a somewhat awk 
 ward situation with Mr. J. Sylvester Ward. In 
 the little talk at Mrs. Dyckman's, Ward had told 
 her everything, or very nearly everything, she 
 needed to know for the purposes of her news 
 paper article. It struck her as whimsical that 
 she should have been placed in possession of 
 the wished for information in circumstances so 
 peculiar. To go to Ward, confess her ambi 
 tions, and appeal to him from the professional 
 standpoint for permission to make use of the in 
 formation he had given to her, or so much as it 
 might be proper to publish, seemed more awk 
 ward than the original undertaking. It would 
 be confessing the whole scheme to the Dyck- 
 37
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 mans, as well as taking a comparative stranger 
 into the secret. 
 
 Yet it was not impossible to take Ward into the 
 secret. The matter was wholly one of business, 
 and Ward, as a man of business, would respect an 
 application made in that spirit Looking at the 
 matter practically, she thought it was a pity that 
 she could not have made an appointment at the 
 ball to meet him somewhere on the following 
 day. That would have been no more novel than 
 anything else about the affair. 
 
 If she could have done this she would have 
 been saved the disappointment of going again to 
 the hotel to find that Ward was not in. She 
 now began to feel uncomfortable at the thought 
 that the City Editor would have abandoned all 
 thought of seeing her again. He would have 
 decided that she had failed to meet the test. 
 The thought was exceedingly unpleasant. In 
 the afternoon she again was starting to go up 
 town when she met Mr. Ward at her own door. 
 
 He had missed her father at the office, and to 
 lose no time had called to discuss a very impor 
 tant business matter. At least, this was his ex 
 planation. After hearing this, Jerry abruptly con- 
 38
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 fessed to him her whole enterprise. "I throw 
 myself on the mercy of the court, " she concluded. 
 
 "I understand," said Ward, evidently not at 
 all embarrassed by the situation. " You want 
 me to keep your secret, but you don't want to 
 keep mine. You want to publish my secret to 
 the world. Now, do you think that's quite fair ? " 
 
 "Oh, but I don't want to publish all of yours 
 just some of it, you know." 
 
 " Will you let me off on the syndicate scheme 
 and the compound drills ? " 
 
 " If you will tell me everything else that's in 
 teresting, and let me make notes right away." 
 
 Jerry found paper and pencil and settled at the 
 library table, Ward regarding her with a kind of 
 quizzical seriousness as she bent herself with 
 great enthusiasm to the taking of notes. 
 
 "Don't you want me to sharpen your pen 
 cil ?" he asked, after she had begun. " You see 
 you will have to read this afterward." 
 
 The point broke twice while he was perform 
 ing this delicate service. "Of course," he said, 
 " I always sharpen the reporter's pencil when I 
 am being interviewed, and I don't wish to dis 
 criminate against you." 
 
 39
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Jerry ventured one or two questions during the 
 process. 
 
 "You had better wait," said Ward, "or I 
 shall break this again; and you won't remember 
 it all, anyway." 
 
 " I wonder," she said, "if you will remember 
 all thatyou say, and stand by it, and not quarrel 
 with the paper afterward because you don't like 
 the looks of it in print ?" 
 
 " But that would include quarreling with you, 
 wouldn't it ? " 
 
 " O, certainly! you would have to quarrel 
 with me first." 
 
 " I'm not afraid of the paper, but I should be 
 afraid to quarrel with you. You look like a win 
 ner," said Ward, watching her narrowly as she 
 resumed her work. 
 
 "You see," Jerry said presently, after an in 
 dustrious period of writing and questioning, "I 
 can fill in the narrative with a good many facts 
 about mining that I myself know." 
 
 " O, yes! " assented Ward, "that's the right 
 way. All the reporters do that. I've had them 
 supply so much that afterward I couldn't see 
 where I came in." 
 
 40
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " But there will be plenty of you in this," sug 
 gested Jerry, "The City Editor was right. He 
 said he knew this would make a good story if I 
 could get you to talk." 
 
 "Get me to talk ! And you did get me to 
 talk, didn't you ? " 
 
 Jerry laughed over her notes. " I had no idea 
 it was so easy. I believe I should like inter 
 views if I could get people to come here to the 
 house like this." 
 
 "Probably a large number would be willing," 
 suggested Ward, " if they 
 
 "Oh, dear !" cried Jerry, "I can't make out 
 this word. What did you say was the name of 
 those little jiggers on the side of the machine ? " 
 
 " Eccentrics. Are you sure there are not some 
 other words there that will bother you ? " 
 
 "Yes." Jerry was examining the notes. 
 "They are my first attempt, but I really think I 
 can read them." 
 
 Just here there was a step in the hall, and Mr. 
 Holbrook appeared in the doorway. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Holbrook ! " exclaimed Ward, "be 
 hold me in the act of being interviewed ! " Then 
 catching Jerry's frightened glance, he added: 
 41
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "Your interesting daughter here has been kind 
 enough to entertain me by listening to yarns 
 about the mines. She is a sympathetic listener. 
 It's a novelty to find a woman who knows so 
 much about the subject." 
 
 " Yes/' said Holbrook, unsuspiciously, "Jerry 
 always did know mines better than her arith 
 metic. " 
 
 Leaving the two men together Jerry hurried 
 down-town to explain matters to her editor. 
 
 Her editor did not seem especially cordial at 
 the outset ; but when she had explained that 
 Ward had been out of town until late in the 
 evening, and that this was why she had not re 
 turned on the same day as instructions and good 
 journalism demanded, his interest appeared to 
 revive. He found a seat for her at a table near 
 his desk and asked her to write out her story at 
 once. 
 
 It was then half-past three. There was con 
 siderable noise in the office, and a continual hum 
 from the hustling streets below. The newsboys 
 were shouting the afternoon "extras." 
 
 The first paragraph in her article occupied 
 Jerry for just forty minutes. Fortunately, the 
 42
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 writing came a little easier after that. She grew 
 somewhat accustomed to the noises, to the mov 
 ing of feet, the jingling of electric bells, the frag 
 ments of conversation, the clicking of a typewriter 
 that seemed to be playing in rivalry to the finer 
 staccato of the telegraph instrument. 
 
 As the afternoon waned, Hamilton came over 
 and turned the button of the electric lamp, re 
 marking, tritely, that there was no extra charge 
 for illumination. The mellow radiance of the 
 lamp gave a special charm to the work, which 
 now began to seem very professional. But it 
 also gave a hint of approaching night and the 
 dinner-hour at home. 
 
 When she had begun to wonder if it wasn't 
 nearly midnight, the article was finished ; that is 
 to say, there was nothing more that she could 
 do with it; and when the last page was written, 
 and after looking it over, with many mis 
 givings, she surrendered it to Hamilton, who 
 evidently had been watching her. He asked her 
 to wait while he looked it over, and she asked 
 whether she might not sit near while he cor 
 rected it. And so she took a seat beside him, 
 -and saw him blot out, interline and otherwise 
 43
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 disfigure her pages with a blue pencil. It was 
 worse than holding out one's hand for a surgical 
 operation; and Hamilton never displayed a sign 
 of any feeling in the matter, or any indication 
 that there was anything unusual in the affair. 
 Here and there he simply said, " We don't put 
 it that way," or, "This is not exactly in the 
 newspaper manner." When he had made poor 
 Jerry's manuscript look like a dress-pattern sup 
 plement, had written a heading and sent the 
 manuscript away by a boy, he helped Jerry with 
 her wraps and found his own hat and coat. 
 
 " If you don't mind," he said, " I will see you 
 to the car." 
 
 "Thank you," she returned, "but I hope you 
 won't disturb yourself. It's very early in the 
 evening, and it's not at all necessary." 
 
 " I am going up-town anyhow," he said, with 
 something of both deference and insistence. " I 
 hope you will give me the pleasure. I am 
 through for the day." 
 
 He did not tell her that the Night Editor had 
 relieved him over an hour before. 
 
 " Of course, by-and-by," he added, as they 
 stopped before the elevator, "you probably will 
 
 44
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 scorn an escort, but you're not yet thoroughly 
 initiated. And besides, I don't see how you can 
 prevent the editor from walking out along with 
 you if he wants to." 
 
 When Jerry sat alone that night and surveyed 
 the progress of her adventure, the incidents of 
 the afternoon began to seem more novel than 
 they had seemed in the progress of their happen 
 ing. Incidentally, she concluded that Hamilton 
 was not a brute. There was something cool and 
 decisive about him that made her wonder whether 
 he might not know how to be disagreeable, but 
 his courtesy had the charm of growing in quality 
 as one thought about it. 
 
 Early the next morning Jerry seized the 
 " Dynamo " and read her interview in that glow 
 of interest with which the young writer fon 
 dles the first progeny of the pen. All the machin 
 ery had disappeared especially the blue pencil- 
 marks. From the erased and patched and 
 seemingly muddled lines had emerged the 
 smooth and authoritative print. And, after all, 
 those blue pencil corrections had looked more 
 frequent and violent than they really were. The 
 story seemed to be much as she had written it. 
 
 45
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 And now that the thing was done, came the 
 reckoning. There was no reason why she should 
 prolong the secrecy, now that she had demon 
 strated that she could do something. She had 
 wished to show that she could do that which she 
 had done. Not that this was very much, but 
 by doing that which she had done she expected 
 to inspire her father's confidence in her ability to 
 face the world. As it turned out, facing the 
 world had not, in this particular instance, proved 
 so very serious or difficult a matter. Everything 
 had favored her. Yet she had faced all that the 
 circumstances demanded, and had not asked 
 that anything be made smooth. 
 
 When she handed the paper to her father she 
 slipped her arm round him and said, " Dick, I've 
 been running off again." It was the confession 
 that she used to make when, as a child, she had 
 gone farther from the camp than he had permit 
 ted. He looked at her and at the newspaper, 
 and then he sat down, and she told him all 
 about it. 
 
 "And did you think that affairs were so bad 
 so bad as to need this?" he asked her in a 
 tone that betrayed resentment. 
 46
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "No, Dick," she said, hoping to prevent him 
 from becoming too serious. "I didn't think 
 matters were so very bad yet, perhaps ; and I 
 guess that was more an excuse than a reason. 
 You understand, Dick, that I had dreamed of 
 doing something like this, of making myself in 
 dependent I mean of not being dependent," she 
 hastened to add when she saw him wince. 
 "Now don't let yourself misunderstand me, 
 Dick. You know what I mean. I wanted to 
 feel the exultation of conquering something my 
 self, for myself ; and maybe, if I could, and had 
 to, for you, too, Dick." 
 
 Holbrook looked at the girl with a pained smile. 
 "And so my daughter is tired of being her 
 father's helpmeet ? " 
 
 " Hush, Dick! that's all wrong. I don't know 
 what I shall do with you if you keep on being so 
 perverse. I shall write an article about you, and 
 call the attention of the Society for the Prevention 
 of Cruelty to Grown-up Daughters. And you 
 haven't even read the article yet to see whether 
 it's good or not." 
 
 "Ah, my dear Geraldine! I take all the pluck 
 and all the talent for granted I'm afraid." 
 47
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " And yet you don't want me to do anything 
 with them." 
 
 " I suppose it was selfish of me to be content 
 to have you make me happy with them all these 
 years." 
 
 "Now look here, Dick," and Jerry took pos 
 session of his hands. "Don't you suppose I'm 
 going to keep right on making you happy with 
 them ? " 
 
 He tried to laugh. 
 
 "And are you solemnly certain that you 
 haven't a little pride about this that you don't 
 feel that it would be awkward to have your 
 daughter earning wages ? Now Dick, that isn't 
 at all modern and proper. You didn't have any 
 such notions out in Colorado. I haven't done 
 this because I didn't like you, you conservative 
 old reformed miner, but because I didn't like my 
 self, because 
 
 " Geraldine, listen to me! If you had wished 
 to take another sort of position " 
 
 She interrupted him. "I know what you are 
 going to say, Dick. You would like something 
 stupidly settled and feminine, you know that, 
 Dick. You think newspaper writing is a little
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 wild and Bohemian. You are afraid some one 
 will call me a reporter." 
 
 "Geraldine, suppose I should say to you that 
 I wished you to give this thing up." 
 
 "Then I should prove how wrong you were, 
 father, by never writing another line." 
 
 He kissed her and added, "Well, I don't say 
 it." 
 
 A few mornings later she watched him read 
 her account of the progress of the North River 
 Tunnel. At first Hamilton had suggested that 
 she write the article as a woman "A Woman's 
 Adventures under the River," or something of 
 that sort but she begged off. "You're right," 
 said Hamilton, "people are tired of the everlast 
 ing woman's view in the newspapers." 
 
 It amused and interested him to see how eager 
 she was to escape the label of her sex in the work 
 she did. "I'm proud of being a woman," she 
 used to say, "but I don't wish to be either 
 praised or pardoned for being one." 
 
 She enjoyed the privileges of her new position, 
 which sometimes were somewhat picturesque. 
 The keeper of the Central Park Zoo enjoyed in 
 troducing her to Juno, and watched with admira- 
 
 49
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 tion the girl's perfectly fearless friendliness toward 
 the venerable beast. Old Juno, nearly half a 
 century old, was one of the creatures at the Zoo 
 who left no doubt of perfect contentment. When 
 the keeper brought a loaf of bread, Jerry did as 
 she was bid in feeding the beast, and when Juno 
 opened her mighty maw, even exceeded her 
 instructions, until the keeper said, "You needn't 
 put the bread so far in." 
 
 If there was a story of suffering anywhere Jerry 
 liked to look it up, and she found new phases of 
 life to be alive with interest. The bootblacks 
 and newsboys attracted her, and she used to 
 speak to them, not from the benevolent altitude 
 of ladies who talk about "my poor,'' but in a 
 companionly way that grew naturally out of her 
 real sympathy and enjoyment. 
 
 Interviewing people soon lost its terrors for 
 her; and, indeed, she was made welcome by the 
 officials and great people who once had seemed 
 so imposing, but who were very nice when you 
 actually met them. 
 
 When she went to inquire about certain ques 
 tions concerning the stability of the great Brook 
 lyn Bridge, she met Superintendent Martin, the 
 
 5
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Chief Engineer who supervised the great under 
 taking, the "brains" of the big bridge, who 
 walked out to the Brooklyn tower to show her 
 why no woman could get to the top of it, where 
 she wanted to go. 
 
 "There is no reason," said Mr. Martin, " why 
 this bridge should not last for a thousand years 
 if it is properly taken care of." 
 
 " And you are doing that," suggested Jerry. 
 
 " Doing what, taking proper care of the bridge 
 or living to be a thousand ?" 
 
 "Well," returned Jerry, with her undaunted 
 laugh, "you are doing one and deserving the 
 privilege of the other." 
 
 She went to see Farmer Dunn, New York's 
 official weather prophet, in his eyrie, then situ 
 ated on the top of the Equitable Building, where 
 you looked out toward the bay and Liberty, 
 with Trinity Church and the steaming city in the 
 foreground. The Farmer couldn't explain pre 
 cisely why the weather was generally so obsti 
 nate, but he admitted that they had determined 
 to try their luck with it in another much higher 
 tower to the south, chiefly, however, because 
 ~ihere was going to be had already begun to 
 51
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 be a new twenty-four-story building next door 
 that would keep off some of the weather. 
 When Jerry had mastered the complicated 
 
 passages of the Grand Central Station, the worst 
 difficulties associated with interviewing Mr. De- 
 pew were over. Mr. Depew is credited with 
 having improved on Lord Byron's phrase by de 
 claring that fame is being good to newspaper 
 people; and it has yet to be said of him that he 
 ever made the fact that one of these newspaper 
 52
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 people was a woman count against her. Cer 
 tainly Jerry, awed as she had been by the pros 
 pect of calling upon the distinguished orator and 
 railroad president, the genius of words and of 
 affairs, never was more quickly made to feel at 
 ease than in the swinging chair of that big pri 
 vate office, before this newest subject of her 
 exceedingly unstudied interviewing method. 
 
 Mr. Depew has the faculty of making the 
 newspaper interview seem almost reasonable, 
 not merely to the interviewer, in whom the last 
 vestige of any embarrassment at once disappears, 
 but to the most critical of readers, who cannot 
 but yield to the charm of that nice art of seeming 
 to answer questions. Jerry was made to feel 
 that the theme which she had broached was one 
 in which Mr. Depew felt a lively interest, and 
 her own interest was proportionately heightened. 
 Her Depew interview was one of the things to 
 which Hamilton chose to award the tribute of 
 his never fulsome praise. 
 
 "But how did you come to know anything 
 about railroads?" Mr. Depew asked Jerry. And 
 Jerry had to remind Mr. Depew that she was 
 wot the person who was being interviewed. 
 
 53
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Thus runs the story of Jerry's mild newspaper 
 adventures, from which I must now turn for a 
 moment to certain others. 
 
 54
 
 II 
 
 TWO or three times during the winter Pink 
 Loper had made brief visits to the Hoi- 
 brook house. Kate never approved of 
 him at all. She looked upon him with undis 
 guised suspicion. One day, when she bestowed 
 a particularly accusing glare, he turned to her 
 and said: "What's the matter, Birdie? Ain't 
 you pleased with me ? " 
 
 "Me name is not Birdie, thank you, sorr." 
 "Waal, it ought to be Birdie, "said Pink. "Yer 
 look like Birdie. Y're the very picture of Birdie. 
 What do y'. suppose is the reason they didn't 
 name yer Birdie ? ' ' 
 
 " You're no gintleman," said Kate. 
 
 "That shows, Birdie, that yer can't see 
 
 through my disguise. I'm a real gentleman, 
 
 Birdie, but down where I work I have to wear 
 
 "this disguise t' keep from attractin' attention; an' 
 
 55
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 yer have no idea how that strain wears on my 
 nerves. I'm almost a physical wreck." 
 ' ' Why don't you cut your hair ? " 
 
 " Birdie, did you ever hear o' Samson ! " 
 
 "Naw, I didn't." 
 
 "Waal, Birdie, he was the strongest man on 
 earth. Samson was a regular snorter for 
 strength; break chains on 'is arm, throw up a 
 four-hundred-pound cannon-ball, tear a pack of 
 cards in half, bend railroad tracks as if they was 
 56
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 fence wire. And one day a woman says to 'im, 
 ' Samson,' she says, ' why don't yer git yer hair 
 cut ? ' An' he says, ' Because I don't want it cut,' 
 he says; 'like it long best.' An' she says, 'but 
 everybody is laughin' at yer,' she says. ' I don't 
 care, ' he says ; 'I'm goin' to go on havin' it long. ' 
 An' then she hung around until he fell asleep, an' 
 then she got a pair o' scissors an' she shingled 
 'im, an' when he woke up he was as weak as a 
 cat couldn't lift nothin' at all. An' you stand 
 there, Birdie, an' ask me why I don't git my 
 hair cut ! " 
 
 Kate gave him a final stare. "I don't think 
 you're right in your head." 
 
 "There yer go agin, Birdie," Pink said, with 
 a sad look at her. "Can't yer see that you're 
 hurtin' my feelin's ? / know what y're goin' 
 to do, Birdie; y're goin' to stand there till yer 
 lull me to sleep, an' then y're goin' to git a pair 
 o' scissors 
 
 But Kate fled; and Pink, following her to the 
 door, came face to face with Jerry. 
 
 " I've been jollyin' the girl a little," he said to 
 Jerry. 
 
 " That's very wrong, Pink." 
 57
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " I know it; but I was doin' it to keep up my 
 spirits. I felt awful rocky to-day." 
 
 " What's the trouble now ? " 
 
 " Same thing. Mary's gettin' very wild. She's 
 pickin' at me all the time. An' yer never saw 
 that woman shoot so beautiful as she's shootin' 
 now. I just admire her shootin'. What's that ? " 
 
 Pink's quick ear had caught the sound of a 
 voice at the door a voice that filled him with 
 terror. In another moment the Rose of the 
 Rockies, in all her glory, was at the door, 
 screaming, "Where is she?" and "Where's the 
 huzzy?" with Kate clinging madly to her tow 
 ering form; and Pink, failing in an attempt to 
 divert the revolver, threw his strength against 
 the extended arm, shouting: "Mary! Mary! 
 Hold on ! Don't shoot ! Don't yer see it's Jerry ? 
 Yer remember Holbrook's daughter ? It's only 
 little Jerry ! Only little Jerry, Mary ! " 
 
 The Rose of .the Rockies lowered a melo 
 dramatically large revolver with which she pro 
 fessionally split potatoes at the Mammoth Mu 
 seum, and surveyed Jerry from head to foot. 
 
 "Yer see, Mary," Pink went on, the con 
 tortions under his moustache indicating his ex- 
 53
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 citement, "I only dropped in t' talk over old 
 times with Miss Jerry the old days at the 
 Panther. Ain't she got to be quite a woman ? 
 
 Isn't it wonderful! Put that gun away, Mary. 
 It don't look right here. Put it away, Mary." 
 
 "Stop your noise, Pink! " retorted Mary; and 
 Jerry, approaching the wild-eyed creature, who 
 stood as if in puzzled indecision, remarked, 
 with an excited inclination to laugh: "I guess 
 you've forgotten about the little girl who used 
 59
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 to be over at the Panther Mine until five years 
 ago." 
 
 "Oh, I ain't forgotten you," said the Rose of 
 the Rockies, in a tone of voice that implied that 
 she had still to be propitiated. "Didn't know 
 you was 'round this part of the country. Might 
 have looked you up. Didn't Pink tell you nothin' 
 about me ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes," assented Miss Jerry, with an im 
 pulse to shield the troubled party on the other 
 side; " he has told rne what a remarkable wom 
 an you are." 
 
 "Oh! you did, did you?" Mrs. Loper turned 
 to her uneasy husband. "An' you never said 
 a word to me about this. You're a sneak, 
 Pink! You never was the size of a man any 
 how. What was you afraid of? Afraid I 
 wouldn't let you come, or afraid I'd come with 
 you ? Want me to have a string to you ? Ob, 
 what I have suffered with that man ! " 
 
 "I'm sure, Mrs. Loper," interposed Jerry, 
 "that Pink hasn't meant any harm. He has 
 only been here a few times, and probably he has 
 forgotten to mention it." 
 
 "Ha! ha! " The Rose of the Rockies looked 
 60
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 at Jerry with an expression of amused pity. 
 'Say, a man could hypnotize you mighty easy, 
 couldn't he ? You must git some sense, or when 
 you have the misfortune to git married the man'll 
 walk over you walk over you ! You don't look 
 like a fool, either." 
 
 "But appearances are deceiving," replied 
 Jerry, with a look that Mary did not seem alto 
 gether able to fathom. 
 
 ' ' But you hadn't ought to encourage him. You 
 can see he's a man that needs constant mindin'. 
 He's worn me just to a shadder of what I was." 
 
 "Now, see here, Mary," said Pink, " what do 
 you mean by talking like that ? I've been a good 
 husband to you." 
 
 "Ha! ha!" Mary laughed again. The laugh 
 was as musical as the creaking of an old hinge. 
 "Jus" hear that man, will you! " 
 
 Jerry made a heroic effort to establish peace, 
 and though the effort did not for a long time 
 seem to result in any definite signs of an im 
 proved attitude between the visitors, the hostess 
 was rewarded at last by seeing Mary in a com 
 paratively tranquil mood, in which she even 
 -went so far as to talk about old times in the 
 
 61
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 West, and was induced to remark, before leav 
 ing, " You was a plucky thing not to git scared 
 at the gun." 
 
 "But I was a little scared," Jerry confessed, 
 " tied up a little inside." 
 
 " It was a bluff, hey! But that's right. Don't 
 you let nobody give you no song and dance. 
 You got a pretty smart tailor-made look about 
 you anyhow. That hat hits me hard. Good 
 bye! Pink! What d'you do with that gun ? 
 
 The incident afforded an amusing theme for 
 discussion when Hamilton made one of his irreg 
 ular, unprofessional visits that evening. 
 
 Jerry described the incident so entertainingly 
 that Hamilton said he was induced to wish that 
 he had been there. "You seem fated to en 
 counter picturesque experiences," he said. 
 
 Hamilton had heard Jerry sing some of her 
 mining-camp songs, accompanying herself on the 
 guitar, and had heard her play some of the jig tunes 
 the stockmen and miners liked. On this night 
 she sang to him a chant with weird notes and 
 comic words, in which the exaggeration of sen 
 timent was very droll. It was a pleasure to see 
 as well as to hear her play. 
 62
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "You play," he said to her, "as if you not 
 only liked guitars, but loved that particular 
 guitar." 
 
 Jerry smiled without looking up. " I do love 
 it," she said. " I feel as if all that I have thought 
 while playing is somehow stowed away in its 
 heart. That's sentimental, isn't it?" 
 
 "I should call it very appropriate sentiment," 
 Hamilton said. 
 "" "I used to play a good deal at the camp. But 
 
 63
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 I wanted to dance too. And so sometimes I did 
 both at the same time." 
 
 "That's what seems so odd to me," said 
 Hamilton, "you don't look it at all." 
 
 " Look it ? How should I look to fill the part 
 properly ? " 
 
 "I don't know exactly. You are what they 
 call an American paradox, I guess." 
 
 Jerry laughed at something in his manner that 
 was at once quizzical and flattering. 
 
 "I tell you, Miss Holbrook," Hamilton said, a 
 little later, "you'll have to write up those things 
 Mining Camp Melodies or something like 
 that. The Sunday Editor would be tickled to 
 death with it, and you could bring in illustrative 
 musical passages." 
 
 She had caught the thread of another chant, 
 and he listened with eloquent attention, paying a 
 second tribute with his eyes. There is a fine 
 flattery that does not use words. 
 
 Hamilton went home with his head full of the 
 quaint music. He stirred the fire in his grate 
 and found himself searching in the coals for a 
 Western cabin lighted with oil lamps, and the 
 picturesque group of men he could see it all at 
 64
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 the sound of the chant ; and he appreciated anew 
 the delightful magic of melody. 
 
 He had once known a girl who played the 
 
 guitar. She lived in a certain Pennsylvania vil 
 lage. She was a sweet girl and he had liked her 
 considerably in a boyish way. Her repertory 
 was exceedingly limited, but it was of the sort 
 that made you willing to hear it over and over 
 again. Her own favorite was the "Suwanee 
 River." She took to playing duets with a young 
 65
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 man who had a banjo, and his favorite was the 
 " Suwanee River " too. After that Hamilton 
 didn't hear her play so often as he had thereto 
 fore. 
 
 A young man sees a good many girls in his 
 time, naturally. There was another village girl 
 who quite inevitably came to mind in any retro 
 spect of this sort. She was one of those lively 
 girls who speak first and think afterward, and 
 who laugh at the mischief they do. Nothing 
 disturbed her good nature. If an enemy smote 
 her on one cheek, she turned the other and 
 there was a dimple in it. Somehow no one 
 could ever understand the process she made a 
 pale little professor fall in love with her. He had 
 a very small salary, and she became quite serious 
 after a while. 
 
 About the first really noticeable girl that Ham 
 ilton encountered in New York was the girl he 
 met at an armory fair when he began reporting. 
 She was the sort of girl that is always chosen for 
 the lemonade-well by that natural selection with 
 which ordinary human jealousy never seems to 
 interfere. There was an almost unconscious 
 grace in her method of hypnotizing the young 
 66
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 men into overlooking the weakness of the lemon 
 ade ; and she had the effect of not being at all 
 diluted herself, Last year she married a National 
 Guard Adjutant, who was admittedly the pretti 
 est man in the regiment, and made a great hit 
 dressing to match his uniform. 
 
 Once when he was frivolous and had more 
 time, Hamilton took part in amateur theatricals, 
 and had to play lover to a girl who seemed to 
 have a kind of pity for his want of theatrical cour 
 age. On the night of the play he used all 
 of his powers, but when the affair was over she 
 told him that he made love like a wooden Indian. 
 She was a fine girl, though a trifle satirical and 
 hard to impress, so that when she went on the 
 stage he felt that admiration of her from a safe 
 seat in the parquet was the most practical thing 
 in her case. 
 
 Then there was the pretty girl he had known 
 when he was in college, who was engaged 
 to a freshman, sophomore, junior and senior at 
 the same time. This girl had a marvelous fac 
 ulty for putting her heart in pawn, and get 
 ting a good advance on it every time. She was 
 "-still the particular beauty of that college town. 
 
 67
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 It was one of the traditions of the place that some 
 student or students should be engaged to her 
 each season. She rather expected it herself, and 
 in the fitness of things it was always expected of 
 her and of the college. And she seemed as young 
 and pretty to every senior as when in his fresh 
 man days, he first acknowledged her charm. 
 
 It is thus that in youth faces fade out of our 
 lives and new eyes look into ours. Familiar 
 voices grow faint in memory, and the lips of new 
 friends coax us to believe that life is all before. 
 The names come back like a strain of last season's 
 song. And the new music 
 
 What a fine instrument the guitar is when you 
 come to think of it ! How full of sentiment ! 
 Not so plunky as the banjo, and without the 
 soulless chatter of the mandolin. And how be 
 coming to a girl! Strange how "La Manola" 
 lingers on the ear ! And the little romanza that 
 made you think of moonlight on a lake, or on a 
 river that flowed by an ivy-grown castle, or some 
 thing like that. The guitar gave to it just the 
 right flavor of mystery and romance. . . . 
 
 Did the string break ? No, it was only a coal 
 tumbling from the fender. Odd how a man will 
 
 68
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 sit up late staring at a fire and almost going to sleep 
 when it is after midnight Odd how he will go 
 on staring at the fire and pondering upon how 
 much he knows of the world since that other 
 girl in the Pennsylvania village used to play for 
 him the "Suwanee River." 
 
 Odd how he will sit in the morning, with one 
 shoe in his hand, trying to whistle the air she 
 played before she played the romanza. Odd how 
 he will catch it after a while, a little wrong, some 
 how, but near enough, and softly whistle it at 
 his work all day. 
 
 Well, you know how those things go. Ham 
 ilton began to think that one of the pleasantest 
 phases of life was to walk up-town with Miss 
 Geraldine late on a spring afternoon ; up vocif 
 erous Broadway, through Washington Square, 
 and under the shadow of the stately marble arch 
 to Fifth Avenue, where Fifth Avenue is quietest. 
 During the whole spring the arch wore a vast 
 apron, behind which men of the chisel were at 
 work finishing the decorations of the graceful 
 span. 
 
 "They call that the gateway between polite 
 "and profane New York," Hamilton said; "but I 
 69
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 like to think of it as a great magnet of public 
 spirit drawing the city, north and south, 
 together." 
 
 "I'm afraid," said Jerry, "that there really is no 
 geography to speak of in New York's snobbery. 
 But the arch is a beautiful and noble thing any 
 how. We should have more of such." 
 
 "Yes, an arch built in that spirit is the best 
 arch of triumph." 
 
 And then, it was very pleasant, when trying 
 70
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 conclusions with Mr. Holbrook in a game of 
 checkers, to have Jerry sitting by with the guitar 
 and improvising the strangest possible mysteries 
 of rythm and melody, or perhaps humming a 
 low tune to some fantastic accompaniment that 
 suggested the barbaric twang of an Indian or 
 chestra. 
 
 Holbrook played a stubborn game and a long 
 one ; and he took the liveliest delight though 
 one which only those who knew him well could 
 see any sign of in puzzling his opponent. Ham 
 ilton was no match for him at all; and besides, 
 there are circumstances in which it is difficult to 
 concentrate one's attention on a game. 
 
 So that it was a very natural thing that Ham 
 ilton should one day find himself in a confused 
 state of feeling when he received a proposition to 
 become the London correspondent of the Dy 
 namo. This was the sort of position he had 
 always thought he would be delighted to get 
 hold of; but there comes to the most of us a 
 time when we worry, not so much about the 
 appointments of Paradise as about who is going 
 to be there. Hamilton wished to decide the 
 ^question of going to London or staying at home 
 
 7'
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 without any sentiment whatever. But very soon 
 it began to be quite clear to him that Miss Geral- 
 dine Holbrook occupied an extremely practical 
 relation to the subject. And so he went to see 
 her that night. 
 
 She seemed very much interested when he 
 told her about it. " It's a splendid opportunity, 
 isn't it ? " she said, simply. " I should think that 
 you would be delighted." 
 
 "Oh, I am," Hamilton admitted, " but I'm not 
 so much delighted as I thought I should be. If 
 I were I don't think I should have come to you 
 so promptly." 
 
 "Now, what does he mean?" she said, look 
 ing at him in a certain quizzical way that she 
 could command. 
 
 "I mean," said Hamilton, "that I had to come 
 to you to see how delighted I was. You don't 
 understand that, of course." 
 
 " How should I ? " she returned. " I'm not a 
 thought reader." 
 
 " Are you quite sure ? That is a good deal for 
 a woman to confess to a man. And you are one 
 of those to whom I should have been most will 
 ing to ascribe the power." 
 72
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " But you are very hard to read." 
 
 " Have you really tried, then ? " 
 
 "Not deliberately. I was a little afraid of you 
 at first even when I was telling you that I was 
 not afraid of anybody. That was funny, wasn't 
 it ? for you're not a bit dreadful." 
 
 "No," assented Hamilton, "I'm quite lamb 
 like when you come to know me. But you are 
 getting away from the question, which is this: 
 I want you to ask me not to go to London." 
 
 "Not to go? "she repeated. "That would 
 be rather selfish, wouldn't it ? " 
 
 " But I would like you to be just that selfish. 
 Of course, if it didn't make any particular differ 
 ence to you, I shouldn't wish you to ask me." 
 
 " You know better than that, you wicked edi 
 tor," she said; "it would make a great deal of 
 difference to me." 
 
 " There is one thing I do know," he went on, 
 " and that is that I have been in love with you 
 for a long time. I realize how much when I at 
 tempt to think of going to London or anywhere 
 else away from you." 
 
 " I didn't think " began Jerry. 
 ~ " You didn't think that it was as bad as that. 
 
 73
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Well, it is just so bad. 1 have stated the case 
 without mitigation. Is it shocking ? " 
 
 "I have never thought about that," she said, 
 without the trace of lightness that crept into so 
 much that she said. " You will think it strange, 
 perhaps, but it is true. I have only been happy 
 in the friendship." 
 
 "And you don't think that you can ask me 
 not to go away?" he said, regarding her in 
 tently. 
 
 " I don't wish you to go away, but I couldn't 
 honestly ask you to stay if the asking would 
 mean 
 
 ' ' You needn't say it, " he interposed ; " 1 know. 
 But I want you to understand that I don't pro 
 pose to give you up so easily as this." There 
 was a whimsical seriousness in his manner that 
 was free from any bitterness, if it also confessed 
 the stress of feeling which he chose to mask in 
 this way. 
 
 "Oh, don't give me up!" she cried, with a 
 return of some of her lightness; and then, see 
 ing in his face a suspicion that she was not quite 
 serious, she quickly added: " I hope you will try 
 to understand me; I hope you will take into ac- 
 
 74
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 count what a peculiar life I have led, how much 
 in company with my father, and how greatly 
 this life has tended to make me independent of 
 thoughts that might have been uppermost in the 
 minds of other women." 
 
 "I think you may depend upon me to think 
 the best possible things of you." 
 
 They tried to speak of other things, and she 
 brought him a queer little Japanese samisen she 
 had picked up in a shop on Fourth Avenue; but 
 a little constraint had crept into their talk. No 
 companionly easiness of manner which Hamilton 
 might force himself to assume could rescue the 
 situation from a definite gloominess. There have 
 been men who looked elegant in the pillory. Men 
 have died artistically in the most unpromising sit 
 uations; but no man ever occupied gracefully the 
 position of having just been refused by a woman. 
 It was like falling overboard into shallow water, 
 in which one could neither sink nor swim. 
 
 When he was leaving she looked quietly into 
 his face. ' ' Do you think you will go to London? " 
 
 "1 don't know," he replied, looking back into 
 her eyes until she lowered them. And he was 
 speaking the truth. 
 
 75
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " But I wish you would promise me some 
 thing," she said. "You may be too angry with 
 me as as my friend, to promise anything; if so, 
 
 you might promise it as the editor. It is this : I 
 want you to let me know as soon as you decide 
 to go to London if you do." 
 
 " I promise," he said. 
 
 "At the very first moment." 
 
 " At the very first moment." 
 
 He wondered why she asked, and after he had 
 76
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 gone she wondered too. She only knew that 
 she didn't wish him to go; or, at least, that she 
 didn't wish this pleasant companionship which 
 
 they had established to be abruptly broken off. 
 She had told him the truth when she said that 
 she had never thought of marriage. If she had 
 ever thought of it at all it was to think that per 
 haps she was not suited to such an undertaking. 
 She did not tell him that she had refused Ward 
 {wo weeks before. If she had, his thoughts on 
 77
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 the matter might not have been tinged with the 
 suspicion that comes with the shadow of another 
 man. 
 
 Each of them had refused to take her "No." 
 She wondered whether this was really a compli 
 ment. It seemed to her as if there must be 
 something doubtful about that. Of the two, 
 Hamilton had seemed to feel the more hurt, 
 though his words had been the fewer. Ward had 
 seemed, then and since, to enjoy a certain confi 
 dence of inducing her to a change of mind. He 
 was a dexterous man. An obstacle only made 
 him cooler. If he had given the slightest sign 
 of any feeling that he was offering her much, it 
 would have been easy to acquire a resentment 
 toward him. No such suggestion appeared in 
 his manner. His deference had all the art that a 
 man of the world could throw into an effort to 
 win something he wished for very much. 
 
 She appreciated the fact that Hamilton was 
 hampered somewhat by the position he had oc 
 cupied toward her. She was indebted to him, 
 and his position was peculiarly delicate. It made 
 her realize her high estimate of him to find that 
 she did not doubt his ability to emerge from 
 78
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 the most delicate of situations without discredit. 
 
 From time to time Hamilton had heard rumors 
 of Ward's connection with a big mining deal. 
 The scheme evidently was to get control of the 
 Long Creek and Panther Mines, and the Rock 
 Ledge Mine to the north, and to turn them over 
 to an English syndicate. Ward had secured Mr. 
 Hoibrook's good will in the matter by an agree 
 ment to square things with the people who had 
 brought suit against the Panther Mine Company 
 to restrain it from an alleged encroachment on 
 their claim. One of the chief objects of Ward's 
 winter campaign in New York was the capturing 
 of the principal Rock Ledge owners, who were 
 New Yorkers. 
 
 Late one afternoon, soon after Hamilton's dis 
 appointment, the young editor heard a significant 
 rumor about the mining scheme, one that seemed 
 to him particularly to concern Mr. Holbrook. 
 An outline of the rumor appeared in an article 
 from the financial writer of the Dynamo. Ham 
 ilton took a proof of the article in his pocket in 
 the evening when he went to dinner. He made 
 up his mind to give the benefit of the doubt to 
 -Holbrook by letting him look at the thing before 
 79
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 the paper went to press, and to offer to add any 
 statements that Holbrook might choose to make 
 by way of modification or denial. 
 
 When he reached the Holbrook house at eight, 
 he found Ward there and Holbrook away at a 
 meeting. Jerry promised that her father would 
 be back very early. "Mr. Ward has been asking 
 for him too," she said, after presenting Hamilton 
 to the other visitor. " I'm so glad you two men 
 didn't come to see me. It is so much more fun 
 to steal the other fellow's company." 
 
 "Evidently we are both very willing accom 
 plices, "said Hamilton. 
 
 "We have been talking about the West," Jerry 
 said to Hamilton, who begged her to go on with 
 that theme. " We people here in the East," he 
 said, "must learn a little more about the West, if 
 we are to understand the current history the 
 West is making." 
 
 " I'm afraid we mislead you," Ward remarked. 
 "We have been talking about the wild and 
 woolly part of Western life the sort of thing 
 which the Eastern man, who hasn't traveled, 
 supposes to be typical everywhere beyond the 
 Mississippi." 
 
 80
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "Yes," said Hamilton, "the East and the 
 West are extremely ignorant about each other." 
 
 Ward insisted that the East was particularly 
 ignorant about the West. "There are many 
 ways," he said, "in which the West has a chance 
 to know what the East has been, and what it is; 
 but unless the Eastern man has been in the West, 
 and has been there long enough to look about 
 him, he takes his notions of the West from the 
 Western newspaper's funny column. Unless the 
 East has its sense of humor in good working 
 order, it is going to make big mistakes every 
 time." 
 
 Jerry was sure that the East didn't understand 
 the Western woman. 
 
 "As for that," said Ward, "I don't believe 
 that the West itself is quite sure of understanding 
 her. I had the pleasure of meeting a feminine 
 candidate for political office last September, and 
 she startled me." 
 
 "Short hair?" asked Hamilton. 
 
 "On the contrary." 
 
 "Pretty?" 
 
 "I should say so. Why, she was as pretty as 
 J;he heroine of a newspaper scandal." 
 81
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "Now, now! " cried Jerry, "We newspaper 
 people will not like you to be so satirical." 
 
 "Oh, he doesn't understand the situation," 
 Hamilton said, smiling. "He doesn't under 
 stand that the newspaper man extends to un 
 seen womankind that benefit of the doubt which 
 is the essence of gallantry. A reporter works on 
 the presumption that every woman is pretty until 
 she has been convicted on competent evidence of 
 being plain." 
 
 "Clever theory," remarked Ward. "The 
 woman I am speaking of didn't ask, and didn't 
 need to ask, for the benefit of any doubt. She 
 had no doubts, and she inspired none. It was 
 beautiful." 
 
 " I don't think I should like a political wom 
 an," said Jerry. 
 
 Ward said their style always put him in mind 
 of the woman in the street car who looks scorn 
 fully at the conductor and says, " Stop at the 
 corner, please!" 
 
 "And yet we are always making mistakes 
 
 about them," said Hamilton. "We all know 
 
 enthusiastic suffragists who are the essence of 
 
 womanliness, and we all have met the clinging 
 
 82
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 vine who has the eye of a doe and the tongue of 
 a parrot." 
 
 "And the dreadful woman who goes into 
 business," remarked Jerry. "It might be awk 
 ward to speak of her." 
 
 "Not at all," returned Hamilton. "She is 
 always interesting, and sometimes useful." 
 
 "Speaking of women who go into business," 
 Ward observed, "they are particularly formid 
 able and awe-inspiring when they describe your 
 personal appearance." 
 
 Jerry looked up from the guitar which Hamil 
 ton had fetched for her. 
 
 " In a distinguished instance," went on Ward, 
 " when the account said ' Mr. Ward is a man of 
 about thirty-five or thirty-six, with those slight 
 touches of gray at the temples which so fre 
 quently mark the hustling American !' I experi 
 enced a peculiar nervousness. There was no 
 telling what would come next. But I really 
 fared excellently as the account advanced. The 
 interviewer was charitable." 
 
 "Oh, she knew you were a Western man," 
 laughed Jerry, " and probably packed a gun." 
 *- "After all," said Hamilton, "in order to read 
 
 83
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 a man rightly you must have him translated by a 
 woman." 
 
 "Listen," Jerry murmured over the guitar, 
 " and I shall translate you two men into music." 
 And she played a queer thing that neither of 
 them had ever heard before. It was a jumble of 
 contradictions, and they each had in mind to ask 
 for an explanation, when Holbrook came in. 
 
 "You people seem to be having a good time," 
 he said. 
 
 Ward turned to Hamilton. "A newspaper 
 man's business is always press-ing," he laughed; 
 "I yield Mr. Holbrook to you," and the two 
 men passed into the library, where Hamilton ex 
 plained to Holbrook his errand, handed to him 
 the paragraph to read, and watched the frown 
 gather on his face. 
 
 "Of course you know, Hamilton," said Hol 
 brook, with a tense sound in his voice, "that 
 the publication of such a thing as this would be 
 exceedingly distasteful to me and unfortunate for 
 the scheme in which we are interested." 
 
 "But it is now a matter of news," began 
 Hamilton. 
 
 "Excuse me, Hamilton," said Holbrook, lean-
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 ing forward in a vehement way, " it is a matter of 
 private concern. What right has the public to 
 be regaled with such matters to the detriment, 
 yes, perhaps to the ruin, of individuals ?" 
 
 Hamilton looked quietly at the older man. 
 "Mr. Holbrook, matters are private so long as 
 they are kept so. When this thing has been 
 talked about on the street 
 
 "Such matters are private until the news 
 papers make them public," interrupted Hol 
 brook, harshly. 
 
 Hamilton arose. " You do not seem to under 
 stand, Mr. Holbrook, that I came here in a spirit 
 of friendliness, intercepting this piece of news 
 with no thought but that of modifying so far as 
 might be possible any injurious effect which 
 you might fear would result from its natural 
 publication." 
 
 "That's all right, Hamilton," don't misunder 
 stand me. I'm not complaining of you, but of 
 the institution you represent. I don't doubt but 
 that you are entirely conscientious in your mis 
 taken defence of it. But just wait until I call 
 Ward. He's as much interested in this syndicate 
 +. matter as I am." 
 
 85
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Holbrook stepped to the door. "Jerry, excuse 
 Mr. Ward for a moment." 
 
 The question was quickly outlined to Ward. 
 "I can't say that I haven't expected this," he 
 said quietly ; " but Mr. Hamilton is in a position 
 of authority can't he suppress the paragraph, 
 if only for forty-eight hours ? _Jhat would 
 hurt nobody. No great principle is at stake," he 
 added, with an evident desire to cajole rather 
 than to antagonize the editor. 
 
 "You are mistaken," said Hamilton, " there is 
 the principle of good journalism ; there is more 
 than that; there is the principle of personal hon 
 esty." 
 
 "I don't see how it can be so bad as that," 
 said Ward, moving his chair nearer to Hamilton. 
 " Let us look the thing over." 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Hamilton, firmly, "this 
 matter has leaked out. It has reached the ears 
 of an accredited representative of our paper. I 
 have no means of knowing that he is the only 
 newspaper man who has heard it. For all I know 
 to the contrary, every newspaper in New York 
 has the same thing in type at this moment, and 
 the press wires have sent it to every prominent 
 86
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 paper in the country. To keep it out of all those 
 papers is impossible; to privately suppress it in 
 my own would be dishonorable." 
 
 "Hamilton," said Holbrook, bitterly, "as I 
 have said, I believe that you are conscientious, 
 but your theory of the matter seems to me fan 
 tastic. It is the sophistry of a pernicious journal 
 ism. It is the kind of thing that has been said 
 in defence of the most frightful violations of pri 
 vate right. It seems to me, Hamilton, that if you 
 really wished to be friendly, you would give us 
 the chance of safety by keeping this out of the 
 paper." 
 
 "I can do no more to convince you," said 
 Hamilton. "My coming here was purely per 
 sonal, with a purely personal desire to offer a 
 service. You ask me to suppress something 
 which you do not deny to be true." 
 
 Holbrook moved impatiently. "Go ahead 
 with it then! You might as well have done it in 
 the first place without a word!" He checked 
 himself. "Pardon me, Hamilton, you have 
 been kind to my daughter 
 
 " He hasn't asked you to consider that, father." 
 ''Jerry had been standing in the doorway. "Do 
 
 87
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 you think that two against one is a fair fight ?" 
 
 The father turned as if to reproach her or to 
 command silence. 
 
 " No use, Dick," she said. " I can't keep out 
 of it. You see I am one of the wicked newspaper 
 people myself, and I know how / should feel to 
 have some one urge me to violate my profes 
 sional honor. Mr. Hamilton came here to do 
 you a favor, and you have attacked him." 
 
 "No, no!" remonstrated Holbrook; and Ward 
 made a gesture of annoyance. 
 
 Hamilton turned to the door. " I am sorry," 
 he said, "that I have not been able to do the 
 service I had hoped. You are sure there is noth 
 ing you care to say ? " 
 
 "If you don't mind, Mr. Hamilton," said 
 Ward, " I shall walk a little way with you, and 
 something may occur to me that we might wish 
 to have said. I shall see you in the morning, 
 Mr. Holbrook." 
 
 The two men left the house together, and at 
 Ward's solicitation they dropped in at the Monas 
 tery, a little English chop-house, where, if you go 
 late enough at night, you can get the best Welsh 
 rabbit in New York. 
 
 88
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 The men took seats at a secluded table in a 
 rear room. The pictures on the wall were 
 mostly French and Italian. The only English 
 picture in sight was the waiter. A good title 
 for him would have been, "Hope Deferred." 
 He was fat, but unhappy; and when a fat waiter 
 is unhappy, his gloom is large and terrible. 
 
 When he had served the gentlemen, the waiter 
 retired to a decent distance and assumed the ap 
 pearance of communing with himself. In spite 
 of his oblivious air he saw, as waiters will, all 
 that passed between the men, and permitted to 
 himself the mild entertainment of listening and 
 observing. 
 
 The older man spoke softly, but it was pos 
 sible to hear: "You have been told half of it, 
 Mr. Hamilton, you may as well hear the rest." 
 After a time the younger man could be heard 
 saying, "Yes, it is a great enterprise." But his 
 face was passive. " Decidedly," said the older 
 man. "It is a big undertaking. I tell you, 
 Hamilton, a young man with your talents could 
 find a more profitable field in a thing of this kind 
 than in the grinding work of journalism. You 
 ' must have executive ability, or you wouldn't be
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 where you are, and your knowledge of men 
 would be invaluable." 
 
 The waiter saw the older man draw a paper 
 from his pocket and spread it out on the table 
 between himself and his companion. He saw 
 him draw out a smaller paper and place it over 
 the first, talking quietly and earnestly as he did 
 so. He saw the younger man's eyes fix them 
 selves on the table in a peculiar stare. 
 
 Then he saw the younger man rise quickly, 
 his face suddenly white. " I see," he said, in a 
 hard tone. ' ' Pardon me for giving you the trouble 
 of getting at the point in such a circuitous way. 
 I have almost made you say the thing in so many 
 words. But the truth is that this time I didn't 
 expect it. A newspaper man is apt to be an 
 optimist, you see, and there are always people 
 from whom he doesn't expect the vulgarity of an 
 attempt to bribe." 
 
 " Mr. Hamilton " began the other. 
 
 " Save yourself any further trouble, Mr. Ward," 
 Hamilton went on, suppressing an inclination to 
 lift his voice. "You are a shrewd man, but 
 you have made a blunder. You have underesti 
 mated the profession and mistaken the individual. 
 90
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Many really clever men have made the same 
 mistake. A proposition of this kind should be 
 carried to the business office." 
 
 Hamilton should have stopped here. But he 
 was only a very young man after all. And so he 
 went on with a strenuousness that owed much 
 of its quality to an antecedent feeling of repug 
 nance toward Ward : "You pass for an honest 
 man, yes, even for a gentleman. But your code 
 permits you to put your heel on a man's honor
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 with as little compunction as you would feel in 
 kicking. a stone into the gutter. I despise your 
 type. I despise the thing you stand for, I de 
 spise every bacillus like you that helps to spread 
 unscrupulousness among honest men." 
 
 " Don't rant," sneered Ward, at last. " Your 
 melodramatic expressions of virtue will need 
 lessly excite the waiter. You get such a holy 
 enthusiasm out of this refusal that it would have 
 been a pity to have omitted the opportunity." 
 
 " It won't pay you to be needlessly insulting." 
 
 Ward smiled. " Please don't," he said. "Don't 
 threaten me. That would be comic." 
 
 "I have no intention of threatening you," re 
 turned Hamilton, the blood in his face, " but it 
 galls me to think that you have secured the con 
 fidence of at least one honest man." 
 
 "Oh, Holbrook?" asked Ward, coolly. 
 "Why, to tell you the truth, Hamilton, I thought 
 your ill-feeling toward me might have had its 
 origin in certain sentiments concerning another 
 member of that household." 
 
 " Stop right there! " cried Hamilton, so audi 
 bly that the waiter started, and a man who had 
 been dozing at a desk in the next room looked 
 92
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 up and rubbed his eyes. "I forbid you to 
 speak of her." 
 
 "Forbid me ?" 
 
 " Yes, forbid you ; if you were not at heart a 
 blackguard you never would have thought of 
 dragging in such an allusion." 
 
 " Dear me! " was Ward's sneer. 
 
 Hamilton turned from him. As he passed out 
 he stopped at the desk where the man had been 
 dozing and tossed him some money. Ward 
 called the waiter, relighted his cigar, folded up 
 the papers on the table before him, and sat for 
 some minutes staring at a little Italian picture on 
 the wall opposite, of a man who had been 
 wounded in a duel. Then he, too, reached for 
 his hat, strode out of the place, hailed a cab, and 
 in fifteen minutes was in the card room at the 
 Continental Club. 
 
 " How are you, Winterhurst ? " he said casu 
 ally to a portly, gray-whiskered man half an hour 
 later. " After I left you to-day it occurred to me 
 that I might have let you have ten of my per 
 sonal shares if you wanted them." 
 
 The gray-whiskered man looked at him nar 
 rowly. "I'm afraid I couldn't take them any- 
 93
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 how," he replied. "Been loading up a little on 
 some other shares to-day." 
 
 Ward changed the subject, but presently Win- 
 terhurst remarked : "What is the best you could 
 do on those ten shares ? " 
 
 "Thirty thousand." 
 
 " Make it twenty-eight and we might talk the 
 thing over." 
 
 Ward shook his head. 
 
 "Twenty-nine." 
 
 "Have your own way," said Ward, laugh 
 ing ; and Winterhurst took a sheet of club paper 
 and wrote something on it in a precise hand. 
 
 " Is that all right?" he asked. Ward nodded 
 and placed his swinging autograph at the bottom 
 of the sheet. 
 
 "Now," Ward remarked to himself, "that lit 
 tle newspaper paragraph in the morning wont 
 hurt so much." 
 
 Two hours later a galley of type in the Dynamo 
 office containing the mining article was dropped 
 by a careless foreman's assistant. About the 
 same time came a rush of matter concerning a 
 frightful spring storm that had been startling the 
 coast. There was no chance to reset the mining 
 94
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 article, and the debated paragraph did not appear 
 in the next morning's Dynamo. Neither did it 
 appear elsewhere. 
 
 Ward had taken a needless precaution. It 
 would have saved him from eight to ten thou 
 sand dollars to have known that he would have 
 another twenty-four hours. He felt chagrined as 
 he strode up Broadway with an angry glance 
 across the square toward the Dynamo office. 
 He had just muttered an oath to a boy who had 
 brushed against him, when he saw Jerry crossing 
 City Hall Square. 
 
 He caught up with her, and for the moment 
 forgot some of his discomfort. 
 
 " Where are you going, my pretty maid ?" 
 
 " To see the editor, sir, she said." 
 
 "May I go with you to the door?" asked 
 Ward. "I shouldn't dare to go further. .The 
 editor and I are out." 
 
 " How shocking! " she said, as if doubting his 
 entire seriousness. 
 
 "Yes, I'm afraid he doesn't love me. May I 
 wait for you ? " 
 
 "If you don't get tired doing so foolish a 
 thing." 
 
 95
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Hamilton was in a mood that made Jerry think 
 of the time when she had been a little afraid of 
 him. "It was very good of you to stand up for 
 me last night," he said, trying to make light of 
 the incident. "I hope that this day's delay may 
 prevent the embarrassment your father feared." 
 
 " And I hope," she added, "that you have not 
 taken father too personally in this matter." 
 
 "I have tried not to." 
 
 "If you want to prove that," said Jerry, "if 
 you want to prove that you have forgiven him, 
 and that you can agree to disagree, I want you 
 to come and see us to-night." 
 
 "To-night?" repeated Hamilton. "I don't 
 know 
 
 "There, don't pretend that you have some 
 thing that will keep you away." 
 
 "Unless something happens, I shall come 
 then. By the way, I have a curious letter for 
 you here." He searched among the papers on 
 his desk. "Your story about unfortunate women 
 has interested some one particularly." 
 
 It was a strange letter, addressed, "To the 
 writer of 'The Pressure of Despair.'' It was 
 scrawled in a muddy ink, and said: "Will the 
 96
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 writer of ' The Pressure of Despair' please call at 
 39 Cherry Street, third floor, front?" 
 
 "The person who wrote that and evidently 
 
 it is a woman," said Hamilton, when he had 
 read the letter and handed it back to Jerry, " was 
 either intoxicated or in a very feeble physical 
 condition perhaps both." 
 
 " It must be somebody in distress great dis 
 tress," said Jerry. " No one could choose that 
 article as a motive for writing who was not feel- 
 97
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 ing the pressure of despair. I must go and find 
 her." 
 
 Hamilton again read the address. "That's a 
 queer locality. Perhaps you had better let one 
 of the boys go around and look the matter up." 
 
 " I should like very much to go myself," she 
 said, studying the tremulous lines with increas 
 ing interest. "It can't be wrong for a woman 
 to go to a woman." 
 
 "Perhaps not. But there are places where a 
 
 woman 1 see you are getting ready to say 
 
 that you don't care." 
 
 " Is Cherry Street so very bad ?" 
 
 " It is a trifle musty." 
 
 Hamilton glanced at his watch. " If you could 
 wait until later in the afternoon, or this evening, 
 I should like to go with you." 
 
 "It is broad daylight," she insisted, "and, 
 Mr. Editor, please let me go alone." 
 
 "Well, it's your letter," laughed Hamilton, 
 "and I suppose, if you wish to be so rash- 
 She went away, with the letter in her hand ; 
 and after she had gone he regretted that he had 
 not refused to let her go alone. He thought for 
 a moment of following her, and strode to a win-
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 dow that overlooked the street. He saw her on 
 the walk below. He also saw the figure of a 
 man at the corner. It was Ward. He saw her 
 
 join him. They spoke together and walked 
 away. 
 
 Then Hamilton sat down at his desk again and 
 wrote two telegrams. One was to the proprie 
 tor of the paper, who was in Washington, say 
 ing that he had decided to accept the London 
 tommission. The other was to Jerry, saying 
 99
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 that he would be detained at the office during 
 the evening, making arrangements to go to Lon 
 don. 
 
 Later in the afternoon a letter came from Hoi- 
 brook, thanking him for keeping the matter out 
 of the paper. "I was sure," said Holbrook, 
 "that your better judgment would prompt you 
 to do as you have done." 
 
 In his answering letter Hamilton frankly stated 
 the reason for the omission of the paragraph. 
 "I am sorry," he said, "that I cannot seem to 
 merit your good opinion." 
 
 In the street below Ward had been studying 
 the army of newsboys that swarmed in the nar 
 row down-town streets. It would be truer, per 
 haps, to say that he was staring into the mass 
 with thoughts on another matter. 
 
 When Jerry reappeared she told him of the 
 strange letter, and added, "You can't go with 
 me." 
 
 " But what will you do if I simply do go ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "But you mustn't," she replied. " I have al 
 ready refused an escort. Goodbye." She turned 
 away, but he caught up with her. "Let me 
 
 100
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 walk part of the way with you, and I will be 
 very good and go just when you tell me." 
 
 When they reached Cherry Street he turned to 
 
 her with a movement of uncertainty. " This is a 
 dreadful place." 
 
 "Doesn't it make you pity them ?" She was 
 searching for the number. "There, you must 
 go now." 
 
 " Can't I wait at the door for you ?" 
 ' "No; that would make me nervous. A 
 
 101
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 woman is safer here than in some less squalid 
 parts of the city." 
 
 He watched her as she entered the house. At 
 the corner he turned and paced the street, peering 
 into Gotham Court and other famous alleys in 
 this region of decayed New York. 
 
 The house that Jerry entered was dark and was 
 pervaded by a disagreeable odor. The third 
 floor seemed particularly gloomy and unpleasant. 
 In response to a knock at a partly opened door 
 in front, a faint voice said, " Come in ! " 
 
 It was a surprise to find the room so clean. 
 In a small bed lay a white-faced woman who, as 
 she turned and saw the visitor, and heard her 
 greeting, muttered, listlessly, "Are you from 
 the Mercy ?" 
 
 "No," replied Jerry, "I'm from the Dynamo 
 office. I received this letter 
 
 "Oh!" cried the woman, starting up in the 
 bed, " I supposed it was a man." 
 
 In a moment Jerry asked whether there was 
 anything she could do to help her. 
 
 The woman shook her head. "I'm pretty 
 near through with help now." She looked in 
 tently at her visitor. " So you wrote that. I 
 
 102
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 thought it was a man. It struck me so that I 
 thought I would like to see him to see him 
 
 and tell him 
 
 "Won't I do?" 
 
 " I don't know. . . . Are you married?" 
 "No," Jerry answered; "Are you?" 
 "I was married," said the woman, looking 
 straight before her. " I was married when I was 
 very young, younger than you are. We ran 
 away, because his folks were rich and wouldn't 
 have it." . . . Presently she went on: 
 "Then they sent him away, and he let them 
 send him. . . . And I never saw him again. 
 After that his father came to me with money, and 
 I threw it at him in his face and told him to 
 let me alone." 
 
 "And you never saw your husband again?" 
 "No. After a while I got to thinking that 
 maybe it was true that marrying me would spoil 
 his life. You see he was a very fine young fel 
 low. . . . And I suppose they forced him to 
 go away. . . . And then one day I had word 
 sent to him that I was dead. ... I thought 
 that it might give him more of a chance. . . . 
 And I was as good as dead." 
 103
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Jerry could find no word to say, but she took 
 the woman's thin hand. " It was too bad, 
 wasn't it," she said after a while, with a feeling 
 
 that her words were empty, "that you had to 
 suffer all these years alone. 
 
 " Yes, I used to think so. That is the way of 
 things in this world. But I saved him. Oh, yes ! 
 he has become a great man now! " 
 
 The woman fumbled under her pillow for a 
 pocketbook. Jerry helped her to find it, and 
 104
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 the stricken hands brought out a crumpled clip 
 ping from a newspaper, which the woman feebly 
 unfolded to its full length. " See! he has made 
 a great name, it seems." 
 
 Jerry looked at the clipping and her fingers 
 trembled. It was her interview with Ward. 
 
 "Things are very uneven, ain't they?" said 
 the woman, peering again at the girl. "What 
 makes you so nervous ? " 
 
 Jerry lifted her head. "You must have loved 
 him a great deal." 
 
 "I did; and that made it awful rough at the 
 beginning. But after I got discouraged and reck 
 less I tried not to think of him any more." 
 
 It was an old, sad story. It was the story 
 which always might bear the same title: "The 
 Forgotten Woman." Jerry listened while the 
 weak voice told it, watching the dark eyes dilate, 
 and the cheeks flush with fever. She listened in 
 a kind of stupor under which the faltering story 
 as it came was blurred in a rush of recollection. 
 Her gaze fell past the figure in the bed, and the 
 voice took on a new sound as of something at 
 once unreal and fatalistic. The murky depths of 
 -life opened in an imminent and personal way. 
 105
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 In her later thoughts of that moment she even re 
 called a consciousness that there was something 
 tragic in her own quiet. For chance had touched 
 her with the very breath of this disaster. 
 
 " And then," said the woman at last, "I got 
 to thinking that I would like to send some word 
 to him before I died. I didn't know exactly what 
 I wanted to say; and sometimes I didn't know 
 whether I wanted to send that word because I 
 loved him or because I hated him. But I want 
 to send it. I made up my mind to that. I want 
 him to know what I have suffered. . . . After I 
 am dead I want him to know. . . . You under 
 stand ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Jerry, brokenly, and vaguely won 
 dering what part there might yet remain for her 
 to play. 
 
 "And when I thought it was a man who 
 wrote that piece in the paper, I thought he would 
 understand, and that he might go to him. . . . 
 You see it was a foolish thing to do, wasn't 
 it? But you are a woman. How could you 
 know ? " . . . 
 
 There was a knock at the door. "Come in ! " 
 called the woman. "It's Mrs. Garry." 
 1 06
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 But it was another. 
 
 Jerry felt a pang at the sight of Ward standing 
 in the door. Growing impatient and suspicious 
 he had mounted the stairs, determined to find 
 the whereabouts of the girl. 
 
 At the sight of the bed he stood irresolute and 
 as if to turn away with some apology, when his 
 eyes rested definitely on the face of the woman. 
 Something in the face brought into his own a 
 look of startled perplexity and horror. The 
 woman, lifting herself painfully, stared, trem 
 bling, at the new comer, her lips moving with 
 out sound, until she was seized by a convulsive 
 excitement that voiced itself in a pitiful scream. 
 
 "Jim!" 
 
 She fell back upon the pillow, her wasted fin 
 gers clutching the coverlet in an effort to turn 
 once again to the door, and as if still in doubt as 
 to the reality of that which she had seen. 
 
 Ward faltered into the room, his eyes still on 
 the woman's face, which in the gray light of 
 the room could be seen working uncontrollably. 
 For a moment he turned to Jerry as if to speak, 
 and made an awkward gesture that halted at 
 some new sense of the agony on the pillow. 
 107
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Jerry had turned away, and Ward somehow 
 reached the woman's side and caught one of her 
 hands. 
 
 At the door Jerry stopped for an instant, and 
 saw him kneeling there beside the poor bed, 
 stupefied, his white face resting in his hand. But 
 the face of the woman was whiter than his. It 
 was under the white shadow of death. . . . 
 
 1 08
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 III 
 
 RICHARD HOLBROOK had telegraphed to 
 his daughter that afternoon, saying that 
 he would not be home to dinner; but 
 circumstances changed his plans, and less than an 
 hour after sending the telegram, he reached home. 
 Jerry was not there. The telegraph envelope 
 in the hall was a reminder of the new crisis in his 
 affairs. He absently read his daughter's name 
 on the envelope, and as he tore the message into 
 fragments, he caught sight of Hamilton's letter 
 on the table. There was no longer any annoy 
 ance in the subject of their talk. Holbrook had 
 discovered some serious streaks of trickery in 
 Ward's scheme, and had withdrawn entirely 
 from the combination. The history of Panther 
 Mine and the history of Richard Holbrook were 
 closely tied up together, and thus far that history 
 wrrs without a stain. 
 
 109
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Jerry came in with Mrs. Remsen-Holt, who 
 had some exciting news about a glorious spring 
 run of the new Bicycle Club, of which she was 
 the President. 
 
 At the door Jerry had taken a telegraph envel 
 ope from a boy. " I see, father," she said, trying 
 to be jocose in the midst of the gloom that the 
 afternoon's tragedy had thrown over her spirits, 
 "I see that you are not coming home to dinner 
 to-day." 
 
 "Oh, "he said, "I came home after all. But 
 where did you get that ? " 
 
 " From the boy at the door." 
 
 ' ' But I tore up my telegram myself. " He looked 
 at the floor. "This is strange. I could swear it 
 was addressed to you." 
 
 They gathered up the pieces, and laboriously 
 patched them together. Jerry was the first to 
 trace the name " Hamilton." Then they learned 
 that he was not coming. 
 
 "Old story," volunteered Mrs. Holt, cynically, 
 from the mirror in the next room. "Detained 
 by business." 
 
 The vital word was last to appear. It was the 
 word "London."
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 Jerry read it with a sensation that was new in 
 her life. 
 
 " Well," called Mrs. Holt, " I can see there is 
 no use trying to talk bicycle to you to-day. But 
 promise that you will come and see me to 
 morrow afternoon." 
 
 Jerry promised. She wanted to be alone. And 
 she felt that she never had been so completely 
 alone in her life before. She had no suspicion of 
 the immediate motive of Hamilton's message, 
 and its abruptness startled her. She was startled, 
 not only because the message was so definite 
 and final, but startled to find how much the cer 
 tainty that Hamilton was going away affected 
 her feelings. 
 
 The situation was as new to her as the whole 
 experience of the winter and spring. This sen 
 sation of loss was one which she had never fan 
 cied as coming to her in just this way. As she 
 had told Hamilton, her life had drawn her very 
 close to her father. In those free, airy days of her 
 girlhood, she sometimes sat in thought of the 
 future, but she had never dreamed of that future 
 as being more than another phase of the present. 
 How new and different it might be, how the 
 in
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 wand of the master magician might change the 
 whole course of things, had never appeared in 
 her reveries. 
 
 When she had looked up at the young lieu 
 tenant who, one Summer, used to interest him 
 self in wondering what sort of a girl she would 
 be in other surroundings, she regarded his thin, 
 brown face as very handsome, and had gone so 
 far as to think several distinct thoughts about 
 heroes in general ; but that Western air some 
 how drove this form of sentiment entirely out of 
 her head. 
 
 No, there was nothing in the experience of 
 those formative years of her life to make her 
 think of that lover who should come and ask her 
 father to stand aside ; ask her to separate from 
 the companion of those happy, adventurous years 
 of life in mountain camp and prairie ranch. To 
 be sure, she was very young then ; but a 
 mountain is a mountain, and a barrier built by 
 the affections is hard to break. 
 
 Yet Hamilton was going away, and going 
 away very soon. This was the hard fact. She 
 could not conceal the change that had come over 
 her, even when her father came home the next
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 noon with news of the failure of Ward's scheme 
 and the sale of the Panther Mine under the most 
 favorable conditions ; she could not conceal it 
 
 later in the afternoon when Mrs. Remsen-Holt, in 
 her obstinately absurd bicycle costume, wanted 
 to know whether the editor had sailed yet. 
 "But I shouldn't tease you, Jerry," she added, 
 with one of her audacious laughs, "for I really 
 think you are as droopy to-day as I was before I 
 had any clubs."
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 The afternoon was drawing to a close in Mrs. 
 Holt's garden. 
 
 "Why should I be out of temper, " Jerry pro 
 tested, " with father's good fortune after a win 
 ter of worry ? And then you and your bicycle 
 are so amusing. But if there isn't Pink! " 
 
 " Pink ?" queried Mrs. Holt. 
 
 A figure had paused for a moment at the gate. 
 Then it strolled up the gravel path with a rolling 
 movement that was not to be mistaken. 
 
 It certainly was Pink, shorn of his long locks 
 and minus his buckskin and leather. " Surprised, 
 ain't yer?" he demanded. "Well, it's all set 
 tled. Mary's goin' on the stage the real stage 
 no more dime museums, and I'm a-goin' to be 
 her business manager." 
 
 "What is she going to play, Pink?" Jerry 
 asked. 
 
 "She says, first-class parts and no gnu. 
 She's goin' to start in with ' Romeo and Juliet.' 
 She was tellin' me she was goin' to do 'Juliet ' 
 herself. I told her I thought she could do better 
 with ' Romeo,' but y' know how cussed set that 
 woman is." 
 
 "It never rains but it pours! " cried Mrs. Holt, 
 114
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 glancing toward the gate of the garden. ' There's 
 your editor." 
 
 Hamilton approached with an inexplicable look 
 
 in his face. 
 
 "I sent you a very brusque message last 
 night," he said, before Jerry could speak. "It 
 was ridiculous." 
 
 " Are you not going to London ? " She asked 
 this in a tone that left him wholly in the dark as 
 to her knowledge and feelings. 
 "5
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 "I have sent my acceptance; but the truth is, 
 I made a blunder yesterday, the most absurd 
 blunder I ever made, and I'm going to humiliate 
 myself by confessing that I saw you meet Ward, 
 and misunderstood you." 
 
 Jerry was silent. He went on with a warmth 
 that, for him, amounted to impetuosity : 
 
 "I can't say anything worse about myself than 
 that. Afterward this morning I heard about 
 that affair in the Cherry Street tenement, and I 
 made up my mind to find you this afternoon. I 
 could see, when I came to think it over, that I 
 had been a suspicious fool; but I ask you to re 
 member 
 
 "To remember that you are a man," said 
 Jerry. 
 
 "If you like," returned Hamilton, ignoring the 
 thrust, "yet not only a man who, because he 
 was a man, could indulge a foolish suspicion, but 
 a man who had reasons to be deeply, profoundly 
 interested in the person of whom he was thinking, 
 and who on that account, if on no other, was 
 was not entirely accountable for his actions." 
 
 They walked back to the Holbrook house in 
 West Tenth Street talking in this vein. Hamil- 
 116
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 ton followed Jerry to the library window. "Take 
 off your hat and stay a while," he said, with an 
 effort to speak lightly. 
 
 He took the hat from her. "What a won 
 derful thing a woman's hat is! Somehow it 
 seems to symbolize the marvelous complexity of 
 her own personality." 
 
 " I suppose,' said Jerry, "that you have some 
 parallel symbolism for the simplicity of a man's 
 hat." 
 
 117
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 She got up, and he turned quickly to her, grasp 
 ing her arms and looking straight into her baffling 
 blue eyes. 
 
 "See here," he said, defiantly, "I want you 
 to sit down a moment and let me talk to you 
 seriously." 
 
 " Must it be serious ? Everything has been so 
 serious lately that it would be a relief to have 
 
 "But I must be serious, you understand just 
 a little." 
 
 118
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 " You seem to be determined," she said, from 
 the depths of the chair. 
 
 "I am! I told you once that I shouldn't easily 
 
 give you up. I meant just what I said. I have 
 also said that I shall go to London. I have said 
 that I shall go very soon within a few weeks. 
 Now, this chair is very artistic, but how do you 
 expect a man to propose to you in such furni 
 ture ? " 
 
 " I don't expect it." 
 
 119
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 He caught her before she could get away, 
 holding her so closely that her eyes were very 
 near his own. " Right here, and now, Jerry Hoi- 
 
 brook : Do I go to London or do I stay at home ? " 
 
 "You go to London." 
 
 " You say that finally ?" 
 
 "Yes, and I'm going with you! " 
 
 He looked as if he didn't believe her. She had 
 staggered him so. 
 
 "Jerry! Do you mean that I may just put off
 
 MISS JERRY 
 
 that London journey for a while and that we 
 may 
 
 "No; you needn't put it off unless you want 
 
 to. I believe in short engagements. And then, 
 you know, father there he is in the garden now 
 father needs a long rest, and I should like to 
 ask him to join us in London. And he has told 
 me, you quiet fellow, that it was you who sent 
 the timely word that made this morning's sale 
 '-of the Panther Mine."
 
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