arlotte was probably having her trousseau made there,
which was a deduction that only a masculine mind of vivid imagination
could have evolved.

Charlotte was gazing eagerly across at her sister. "It does not rain
nearly so hard now," said she. "I think I might venture." She looked
irresolutely at her hat on the counter.

"I can let you have an umbrella," said Anderson.

"Thank you," said Charlotte, "but my hair is still so wet, and my hat
is lined with pink chiffon, you know."

"Yes," said Anderson, respectfully. He did not know what pink chiffon
was, but he understood that water would injure it.

"If I might leave my hat here," said Charlotte, "until I come back--"

"Certainly," replied Anderson.

"Then I think I can go now. No, thank you; I won't take the umbrella.
I am about as wet as I can be now, and, besides, I like to feel the
rain on my shoulders."

With a careful but wary gathering up of her white skirts, with chary
disclosures of lace and embroidery and little skipping shoes, she was
gone in a snowy whirl through the mist across the street. She seemed
to fly over the puddles. The girl's head disappeared from the
opposite window and Anderson heard quite distinctly the outburst of
laughter and explanation.

"You had better get a sheet of tissue-paper and put it over that," he
said to Sam Riggs, and he pointed at Charlotte's hat on the counter.
Then he went back to his office and wrote some letters. He resolved
that he would not see Charlotte when she returned for her hat.

Presently the sun shone into the office, and a new light seemed to
come from the rain-drenched branches outside the window. Anderson
continued to write, feeling all the time unhappiness heavy in his
heart. He also had a sense of injury which was foreign to him. He was
distinctly aware that he had an unfair allotment of the good things
of life. Yet there was a question dinning through his consciousness:
"Why should I have so little?" Then the world-old query considering
personal responsibility for misery swept over him. "What have I
done?" he asked himself, and answered himself, with a fierce
challenge of truth, that he had done nothing. Then the habit of his
life of patience, which was at the same time a habit of bravery,
asserted itself. He wrote his letters carefully and closed his ears
to the questions.

It was about half an hour later, and he was thinking about going
home, when Sam Riggs came to the office door and informed