I'll prepare Marian, and the Peterkins will really enjoy it.' So Marian, who, with all her accomplishments and foreign air, was a kind-hearted, sensible girl, was prepared, and received the Peterkins very graciously, and seemed really pleased with Billy, whose big, kind heart shone through his diminutive body and always won him friends.

He was very happy to be there, because he liked society, and because he knew Jerrie was coming; and Ann Eliza was very glad because she felt it an honor to be at Grassy Spring, and because she knew Tom was coming, and when he came she fastened upon him with a tenacity which he could not well shake off; and when croquet was proposed she was the first to respond.
'Oh, yes, that will be nice, and I know our side will beat,' and she looked at Tom as it were a settled thing that she should play with him.
But Tom was not in a mood to be gracious.

He had come to the entertainment, which he mentally called a bore, partly because he would not let Jerrie think he was taking her refusal to heart, and partly because he must see her again, even if she never could be his wife.

All the better nature of Tom was concentrated in his love for Jerrie, and had she married him he would probably have made her as happy as a wholly selfish man can make happy the woman he loves.

But she had declined his offer, and wounded him deeper than she supposed.
A hundred times he had said to himself that afternoon, as he sat alone in the lovely park--of which he had once said to Harold, he was to be the _hare_, and of whose possession in the future he had boasted to Jerrie--that he did not care a _sou_, that he was glad she had refused him, for after all it was only an infatuation on his part; that the girl of the carpet-bag was not the wife for a Tracy; but the twinge of pain in his heart belied his words, and he knew he did love Jerrie Crawford better than he should ever again love any girl, whether the daughter of a governor or of the president.
'And I go to the party, too, just to show her that I don't care, and for the sake of looking at her,' he said.