"And it is going to rain," added Jenny, with that placid indifference to the weather which distinguishes country children.
"What; and I have brought no umbrella, and you have only that thin cloak, Jenny. But perhaps you are wrong. I always notice that when people say it is going to rain, it invariably turns out fine, perhaps for weeks."
"It's going to rain now, Miss Lucy," repeated Jenny, still more confidently; and a moment or two afterward she added, "There!"
Lucy felt a spot on her face and seized the girl's basket.
"You must let me carry this, Jenny, because we shall have to hurry all we know. It will never do to go in wet through. What would Miss Leslie say?"
This formula, which she found of great service when admonishing the children, lent speed to Jenny's small feet, and Lucy and she hurried along the road. But quickly as they went the rain caught them up, and presently it came down in a torrent.
Jenny laughed, and Lucy, being rather careful of her clothes, and inclined to take matters seriously, was constrained to laugh too.
"We must get under a tree," she said. "There, squeeze up against the trunk, and I will stand in front of you and shelter you as well as I can. Oh, what would I give for an umbrella!"
Jenny leaned against the tree and amused herself by twisting a spray of brown ivy leaves into a wreath, and looking up at the weather now and again; and Lucy was rapidly sinking into that semi-indifferent, semi-despairing condition which such circumstances produce, when she heard the rattle of a cart coming along the road.