id she, and Anderson changed it in
alarm.

"I hope I have not injured it," he said.

She was laughing openly at him. "No," she replied, "but you put it
right on the roses. Men don't know how to handle girls' hats, do
they?"

"No; I fear they don't," replied Anderson.

He remained leaning against the counter near the door; the old clerk
lounged against the next one, on the end of which Sam Riggs was
perched. Charlotte remained standing in the doorway, leaning slightly
against the post, and they all watched the storm, which was fast
reaching its height. The flashes of lightning were more frequent, the
crashes of thunder followed fast, sound overlapping sight. The rain
became a flood. The girl watched, with the intense, self-forgetful
delight of a child, the plash of the great blobs of rain on the
macadamized road outside. They came to look to her exactly like
little figures chasing one another in an unintermittent race of
annihilation. She smiled, watching them. Anderson, looking from the
rain to her, saw the smile, and thought with a little pang that she
was probably thinking of her own happiness when she smiled to herself
like that. He kept his eyes fixed upon her for a moment, her
glistening dark head, her smooth cheek, her smiling mouth, her
shoulders faintly pink through her thin white gown, which, being wet,
clung to them. Charlotte's shoulders were thin, but the hollowing
curve from the throat to the arm was ravishing. Anderson's face
hardened a little. He looked away again at the rain.

All at once Charlotte glanced up from the dancing flight of the
rain-drops on the road, and laughed. "Why," she cried, "there is Ina!
There is my sister!"

Anderson looked, and in a second-story window opposite was a girl's
head in a violet-trimmed hat. She was smiling and nodding. Charlotte
waved her hand to her.

"I'll be over as soon as it holds up a little," she cried out. "Did
you get wet?"

The girl in the window hollowed a slim hand over an ear.

"Did you get caught in the shower? Did you get wet?" called Charlotte.

The girl in the window shook her head gayly.

"She didn't," Charlotte said, with an absurd but charming confidence
to Anderson; "but, anyway, she didn't have on her very best hat."

"I am very glad," Anderson replied, politely. He read a sign fastened
beneath the window which framed the girl's head--"Madame Estelle
Griggs, Modiste." He reflected that she was the Banbridge dressmaker,
and that Ch