No man who really loved a girl could speak of her mental weakness to another as Harold had spoken of Maude's to her, and it might be after all that he merely thought of her as a friend, whom he had always known.

So the cloud was lifted in part, and she only felt a greater anxiety for Maude's health, which as the spring advanced, grew stronger, so that it was almost certain that she would come to Vassar in the summer and see her friend graduated.
Such was the state of affairs when Nina repeated to Jerrie what Harold had said to her at the musicale the previous winter.

All day long there was a note of gladness in Jerrie's heart which manifested itself in snatches of song, and low, warbling, whistled notes, which sounded more as if they came from a canary's than from a human throat.

Jerrie did _not_ chew gum, but she whistled, and the teachers who reproved her most for what they called a boyish trick, always listened intently, when the clear, musical notes, now soft and low, now loud and shrill, were heard outside, or in the building.
'Whistling Jerrie,' the girls sometimes called her, but she rather liked the name, and whistled on whenever she felt like it.
And it was a very joyous, happy song she trilled, as she thought of Harold's compliment, and wished she might wear at commencement the dress of baby-blue which he had admired, for Harold would, of course, be there to see and hear, and as, when he wrote his valedictory two years before there had been in every line a thought of her, so in her essay, which was peculiarly German in its method and handling, thoughts of Harold had been closely interwoven.

She knew she should receive a surfeit of applause--she always did; but if Harold's were wanting the whole thing would be a failure.