He had not seen Jerrie since he took her home in his dog-cart, and his face was scarlet and his manner nervous and constrained as he stood before her, longing and yet not daring to fan her with his hat just as Tom was doing.
Of the three young men who had sought her hand, Billy's wound was the deepest, and Billy would remember it the longest; for, mingled with his defeat, was a sense of mortification and hatred of his own personal appearance, which he could not help thinking had influenced Jerrie's decision.

'And I don't blame her, by Jove!' he said to himself a hundred times.

'She could not marry a pigmy, and I was a fool to hope it; but I shall love her just the same as long as I live, and if I can ever help her I will.' And when at last Jerrie was better, and assured him so with her own sweet graciousness of manner, and put her hand upon his shoulder to steady herself as she stood up, he felt that paradise was opening to him again, and that although he had lost Jerrie as a wife, he still had her as a friend, which was more than he had dared expect.
'Are you better now?
Can you walk to the house ?' Tom asked.
'Oh, yes; I can walk.

The giddiness is gone,' Jerrie replied.

'I don't quite know what ails me this morning.' Never before could she remember having felt as she did now, with that sharp pain in her head, that buzzing in her ears, and more than all, that peculiar state of mind which she called "spells," and which seemed to hold her now, body and soul.