mped getting back here. That is where most of
this mud came from--" and Jack turned his long, clay-encrusted boot so
that Ruth could see how large a section of the "fill" he had brought
with him.

Ruth began to laugh. There was no ostensible reason why she should
laugh; there was nothing about Jack's make-up to cause it. Indeed, she
thought he had never looked so handsome, even if his hair were plastered
to his temples under his water-soaked hat and his clothes daubed with
mud.

And yet she did laugh:--At the way her veil got knotted under her
chin,--so tightly knotted that Jack had to take both hands to loosen it,
begging pardon for touching her throat, and hoping all the while that
his clumsy fingers had not hurt her;--at the way her hat was crumpled,
the flowers "never,--never, being of the slightest use to anybody
again"; at her bedraggled skirts--"such a sight, and sopping wet."

And Jack laughed, too,--agreeing to everything she said, until she
reached that stage in the conversation, never omitted on occasions of
this kind, when she declared, arching her head, that she must look like
a perfect fright, which Jack at once refuted exclaiming that he had
never seen her look so--he was going to say "pretty," but checked
himself and substituted "well," instead, adding, as he wiped off
her ridiculously small boots, despite her protests, with his wet
handkerchief,--that cloud-bursts were not such bad things, after all,
now that he was to have the pleasure of escorting her home.

And so the two walked back to the village, the afternoon sun, which
had now shattered the lowering clouds, gilding and glorifying their
two faces, Jack stopping at Mrs. Hicks's to change his clothes and Ruth
keeping on to the house, where he was to join her an hour later, when
the two would have a cup of tea and such other comforts as that young
lady might prepare for her water-soaked lover.

CHAPTER XXI

If ten minutes make half an hour, then it took Jack that long to rush
upstairs, two steps at a time, burst into his room, strip off his boots,
tear off his wet clothes, struggle into others jerked from his wardrobe,
tie a loose, red-silk scarf under the rolling collar of his light-blue
flannel shirt, slip into a grey pea-jacket and unmentionables, give his
hair a brush and a promise, tilt a dry hat on one side of his head and
skip down-stairs again.

Old Mrs. Hicks had seen him coming and had tried to catch him as he
flew out the