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 door, hoping to get some more definite news of the calamity which had stirred the village, but he was gone before she could reach the front hall.
He had not thought of his better clothes; there might still be work to do, and his Chief might again need his services. Ruth would understand, he said to himself—all of which was true. Indeed, she liked him better in his high-water rubber boots, wide slouch hat and tarpaulins than in the more conventional suit of immaculate black with which he clothed his shapely body whenever he took her to one of the big dinners at one of the great houses on Washington Square.
And she liked this suit best of all. She had been peeping through the curtains and her critical admiring eyes had missed no detail. She saw that the cavalier boots were gone, but she recognized the short pea-jacket and the loose rolling collar of the soft flannel shirt circling the strong, bronzed throat, and the dash of red in the silken scarf.
And so it is not surprising that when he got within sight of her windows, his cheeks aflame with the crisp air, his eyes snapping with the joy of once more hearing her voice, her heart should have throbbed with an undefinable happiness and pride as she realized that for a time, at least, he was to be all her own. And yet when he had again taken her hand—the warmth of his last pressure still lingered in her palm—and had looked into her eyes and had said how he hoped he had not kept her waiting, all she could answer in reply was the non-committal remark:
“Well, now you look something like”—at which Jack's heart gave a great bound, any compliment, however slight, being so much manna to his hungry soul; Ruth adding, as she led the way into the sitting-room, “I lighted the wood fire because I was afraid you might still be cold.”