morning when he came in from the garden and told mother that he was going to pick our first peas, so as to have them perfectly fresh for dinner, she said that he would better not pick them to-day, because the vegetable man had been along just after breakfast, and he had had such nice green peas that she had bought some, and therefore he had better keep his peas for some other day.
"Now, I don't want you to think that mother isn't just as good as gold, for she is. But she doesn't take such interest in garden things as father does, and to her all peas are peas, provided they are good ones. But when father heard what she had done I know that he felt exactly as if he had been stabbed in one of his tenderest places. He did not say one word, and he walked right out of the house, and since that they haven't spoken to each other. It was dreadful to sit at dinner, neither of them saying a word to the other, and only speaking to me. It was all so different from the way things generally are that I can scarcely bear it.
"And I went out this afternoon for no other reason than to give them a chance to make it up between them. I thought perhaps they would do it better if they were alone with each other. But of course I do not know what has happened, and things may be worse than they were. I could not take a stranger into the house at such a time—they would not like to be found not speaking to each other—and, besides, I do not know—"
Here I interrupted her, and begged her not to give another thought to the subject. I wanted very much to go on, and in every way it was the best thing I could do.
As I finished speaking she pointed out a pretty house standing back from the road, and told me that was where she lived. In a very few minutes after that I had run her up to the steps of her piazza and was assisting her to dismount from her wheel.
"It is awful!" she said. "This rain is coming down like a cataract!"
"You must hurry in-doors," I answered. "Let me help you up the steps." And with this I took hold of her under the arms, and in a second I had set her down in front of the closed front door. I then ran down and brought up her wheel. "Do you think you can manage to walk in?" said I.
"Oh yes!" she said. "If I can't do anything else, I can hop. My mother will soon have me all right. She knows all about such things."
She looked at me with an anxious expression, and then said, "How do you think it would do for you to wait on the piazza until the rain is over?"
"Good-bye," I said, with a laugh, and bounding down to the front gate, where I had left my bicycle, I mounted and rode away.
The rain came down harder and harder. The road was full of little running streams, and liquid mud flew from under my whirling wheels. It was not late in the afternoon, but it was actually getting dark, and I seemed to be the only living creature out in this tremendous storm. I looked from side to side for some place into which I could run for shelter, but here the road ran between broad open fields. My coat had ceased to protect me, and I could feel the water upon my skin.
But in spite of my discomforts and violent exertions I found myself under the influence of some very pleasurable emotions, occasioned by the incident of the slender girl. Her childlike frankness was charming to me. There was not another girl in a thousand who would have told me that story of the peas. I felt glad that she had known who I was when she was talking to me, and that her simple confidences had been given to me personally, and not to an entire stranger who had happened along. I wondered if she resembled her father or her mother, and I had no doubt that to possess such a daughter they must both be excellent people.
CHAPTER III
THE DUKE'S DRESSING-GOWN
At the very entrance I was met by a little man in short jacket and top-boots.
"I heard your step," said he. "Been caught in the rain, eh? Well, this is a storm! And now what're we going to do? You must come in. But you're in a pretty mess, I must say! Hi, Maria!"
At these words a large, fresh-looking woman came into the little hall.
"Maria," said the man, "here's a gentleman that's pretty nigh drowned, and he's dripping puddles big enough to swim in."
The woman smiled. "Really, sir," said she, "you've had a hard time. Wheeling, I suppose. It's an awful time to be out. It's so dark that I lighted a lamp to make things look a little cheery. But you must come in until the rain is over, and try and dry yourself."
"But how about the hall, Maria?" said the man. "There'll be a dreadful slop!"
"Oh, I'll make that all right," she said. She disappeared, and quickly returned with a couple of rugs, which she laid, wrong side up, on the polished floor of the hallway. "Now you can step on those, sir, and come into the kitchen. There's a fire there."
I thanked her, and presently found myself before a large stove, on which it was evident, from the odors, that supper was preparing. In a certain way the heat was grateful, but in less than a minute I was bound to admit to myself that I felt as if I were enveloped in a vast warm poultice. The little man and his wife—if wife she were, for she looked big enough to be his mother, and young enough to be his daughter—stood talking in the hall, and I could hear every word they said.
"It's of no use for him to try to dry himself," she said, "for he's wet to the bone. He must change his clothes, and hang those he's got on before the fire."
"Change his clothes!" exclaimed the man. "How ever can he do that? I've nothing that'll fit him, and of course he has brought nothing along with him."
"Never you mind," said she. "Something's got to be got. Take him into the little chamber. And don't consider the floor; that can be wiped up."
She came into the kitchen and spoke to me. "You must come and change your clothes," she said. "You'll catch your death of cold, else. You're the school-master from Walford, I think, sir? Indeed, I'm sure of it, for I've seen you on your wheel."
Smiling at the idea that through the instrumentality of my bicycle I had been making myself known to the people of the surrounding country, I followed the man into a small bed-chamber on the ground-floor.
"Now," said he, "the quicker you get off your wet clothes and give yourself a good rub-down the better it will be for you. And I'll go and see what I can do in the way of something for you to put on."
I asked him to bring me the bag from my bicycle, and after doing
