Occasionally she moaned and talked in her sleep of the Tramp House, and rats, and Peterkin, who had struck the blow and knocked something or somebody down, Mrs.Crawford could not tell what, unless it were Jerrie herself, on whose forehead there was a bunch the size now of a walnut.
'Jerrie, Jerrie,' Mrs.Crawford cried in alarm, as she tried to remove the girl's clothes.

'What is it, Jerrie?
What has happened?
Who hurt you?
Who struck the blow ?' 'Peterkin,' was the faint response, as for an instant Jerrie opened her eyelids only to close them again and sink away into a heavier sleep or stupefaction.

It seemed the latter, and as Mrs.Crawford could not herself go for a physician, and as no one came down the lane that evening, she sat all night, by Jerrie's bed, bathing the feverish hands and trying to lessen the lump on the forehead, which, in spite of all her efforts, continued to swell until it seemed to her it was as large as a hen's egg.
'Did Peterkin strike you, and what for ?' she kept asking; but Jerrie only moaned and muttered something she could not understand, except once when she said, distinctly: 'Yes, Peterkin.

Such a blow; it was like a blacksmith's hammer, and knocked the table to pieces.

I am glad he did it.' What did she mean?
Mrs.Crawford asked herself in vain, and when at last the early summer morning broke, she was almost as crazy as Jerrie, who was steadily growing worse, and who was saying the strangest things about arrests and blows, and Peterkin, and Harold, and Mr.Arthur, whose name she always mentioned with a sob and stretching out of her hands, as to some invisible presence.