itting-room well out of range of the
chimney, and prayed for her own and her son's safety, and
incidentally for the safety of the maid, who was in the adjoining
room with the door open, and for the house and her son's store. She
always did thus in a thunder-shower, but she never told any one this
innocent childish secret of an innocent old soul.

She thought with a sort of undercurrent of faithlessness of the great
draught in her son's store if the large front doors and the office
door were both open, as there was a strong probability of their
being. She thought uneasily that her son might be that very moment in
that draught, as indeed he was. He stood in the strong current of
fresh storm-air, with its pungent odors, more like revelations than
odors, of things which had been in abeyance for some time past in the
drought. The smell of the wet green things was like a paean of joy.
It was a call of renewed life out of concealed places of fainting and
hiding. There were scents of flowers and fruits, and another strange
odor, like the smell of battle, from all the ferment on the earth
which had precipitated the storm. It was quite a severe
thunder-shower. The rain had held off for a fierce prelude, then it
came in solid cataracts. Then it was that Charlotte Carroll rushed
into the store. She was dripping, beaten like a flower, by the force
of the liquid flail of the storm. She had pulled off the
rose-wreathed hat which was dear to her heart, and she had it under
her dress skirt, which she held up over her lace-trimmed petticoat
modestly, with as little revelation as might be. Her dark head
glistened with the rain.

Anderson stepped forward quickly. "Pray come into the office, Miss
Carroll," he said.

But she remained standing in front of the door, having removed her
hat furtively from its shelter. "No, thank you," said she, "I would
rather stay here. I like to watch it."

Anderson fetched a chair from his office, but she thanked him and
said that she preferred standing.

"I thought I had time to get to Madame Griggs's on the other side of
the street," said she, "but all at once it came down."

Anderson felt her ungraciousness, but she herself did not seem to
realize it at all. Presently she gave a little sidewise smile at him,
and comprehended in the smile the old clerk and the boy who hovered
near.

"It is a fine shower," said she, with a kind of confidential glee. As
she spoke she looked out at the snarl of rain