ffront the
blast and the tempest alone! I have a brown hat on--at least it _was_
brown when we set off--I am just wondering, therefore, with a sort of
stupid curiosity, why the _rill_ that so plenteously distills from its
brim, and so madly races down my cold nose, should be _sky blue_, when I
perceive that Barbara has left her shelter, and her lover, and is
standing beside me.

"Poor Nancy!" she says, with a softly compassionate laugh, "how wet you
are! come under the plaid with me! you have no notion how warm it keeps
one; and the tree, though it does not _look_ much, saves one a bit,
too--and Frank does not mind being wet--come quick!"

I am too wretched to object. No water-proof could stand the deluge to
which mine has been subjected. My shoulder-blades feel moist and
_sticky_: my hair is in little dismal ropes, and dreadful runlets are
coursing down my throat, and under my clothes.

Without any remonstrance, I snuggle under the plaid with Barbara--with a
little of the feeling of soothing and dependence with which, long ago,
in the dear old dead days at home, I used, when I was a naughty child,
or a bruised child--and I was very often both--to creep to her for
consolation.

Thanks to the wind, and to our proximity, we are able to talk without a
fear of being overheard.

"You are wrong!" Barbara says, glancing first toward the coach, and then
turning the serene and limpid gravity of her blue eyes on me; "you are
making a mistake!"

I do not affect to understand her.

"_Am I?_" I say, indignantly; "I am doing nothing of the kind! it is not
only my own idea!--ask Algy!"

"_Algy!_" (with a little accent of scorn), "poor Algy!--he is in such a
fit state for judging, is not he?"

We both involuntarily look toward him.

It is _his_ turn now, and his morosity is exchanged for an equally
uncomfortable hilarity. His cheeks are flushed; he is laughing loudly,
and going in heavily for the champagne. The next moment he is scowling
discourteously at his old host, who, with his poor old chuckle entirely
drowned, and overcome by an endless sort of choking monotony of cough,
is clambering on tottery old legs into the coach, to try and get his
share of shelter.

We both laugh a little; and then Barbara speaks again.

"Nancy, I want to say something to you. Just now I heard Roger ask
whether there was a fly to be got at the public-house where the horses
are put up, and it seems there _is_; and he has sent for it. You m