Mrs. Fenelby looked at him doubtfully, and then glanced at Kitty’s innocent face. She shook her head. It did not seem just what Tom would have done, but she could not deny that it might be so. She would know all about it when he came home in the evening. She cast a glance at the lawn, and uttered a cry. Billy was pouring oceans of water at full pressure upon her pansy bed, and the poor flowers were dashing madly about and straining at their roots. Some were already lying washed out by the roots. Billy looked, and swung the nozzle sharply around, and the scream that Kitty uttered told him that he had hit another mark. That pink shirt-waist looked disreputable. Water was dripping from all its laces, and from Kitty’s hair, and her cheeks glistened with pearly drops. She was drenched.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed, shaking her hanging arms and her down-bent head, and then glancing at Billy, who stood idiotically regarding her, she laughed. He was a statue of miserable regret, and the limply held garden hose was pouring its stream unheeded into his low shoes. Wet as she was, and uncomfortable, she could not refrain from laughing, for Billy could not have looked more guilty if she had been sugar and had completely melted before his eyes. Even Mrs. Fenelby laughed.
“It doesn’t matter a bit!” said Kitty, reassuringly. “Really, I don’t mind it at all. It was nice and cool.”
She was very pretty, from Billy’s point of view, as she stood with a wisp or two of wet hair coquettishly straggling over her face. Mrs. Fenelby would have said she looked mussy, but there is something strangely enticing to a man in a bit of hair wandering astray over a pretty face. Before marriage, that is. It quite finished Billy. He forgave her all just on account of those few wet, wandering locks.
“I’m so sorry!” he said, with enormous contrition. “I’m awfully sorry. I’m—I’m mighty sorry. Really, I’m sorry.”
“Now, it doesn’t matter a bit,” said Kitty lightly. “Not a bit! I’ll just run up and get on something dry—”
“You had better shut off the water,” said Mrs. Fenelby, and went into the house.
Billy laid the hose carefully at his feet.
“I say,” he said, hesitatingly, to Kitty, “wear the one you had on last night—the white one. I—I think that one’s pretty.”
“Oh, no!” said Kitty. “I can’t wear that one. That one is all mussed up. I can’t wear that one again. I have a lovely blue one.”