Joe looked up at him with a smile through her tears, beautiful as a rose just wet with a summer shower.
“And so–you did not think I could,” she said. She dried her eyes quickly and rose to her feet. “It is very silly of me, I know, but I cannot help it in the least,” said she, turning from him in pretense of arranging the knickknacks on the mantel.
“Of course you cannot help it, Joe, dear; as if you had not a perfect right to cry, if you like! I am such a brute–I know.”
“Come and look at the snow,” said Joe, taking his hand and leading him to the window. Enormous Irishmen in pilot coats, comforters, and india-rubber boots, armed with broad wooden spades, were struggling to keep the drifts from the pavement. Joe and Ronald stood and watched them idly, absorbed in their own thoughts.
Presently a booby sleigh drawn by a pair of strong black horses floundered up the hill and stopped at the door.
“Oh, Ronald, there is Sybil, and she will see I have been crying. You must amuse her, and I will come back in a few minutes.” She turned and fled, leaving Ronald at the window.
A footman sprang to the ground, and nearly lost his footing in the snow as he opened a large umbrella and rang the bell. In a moment Sybil was out of the sleigh and at the door of the house; she could not sit still till it was opened, although the flakes were falling as thickly as ever.
“Oh”–she exclaimed, as she entered the room and was met by Ronald, “I thought Joe was here.” There was color in her face, and she took Ronald’s hand cordially. He blushed to the eyes, and stammered.
“Miss Thorn is–she–indeed, she will be back in a moment. How do you do? Dreadful weather, is not it?”
“Oh, it is only a snowstorm,” said Sybil, brushing a few flakes from her furs as she came near the fire. “We do not mind it at all here. But of course you never have snow in England.”