“Well, I don’t know,” said Charley coolly, in his rough tweed suit that no amount of rain would have injured. “Better to-day than to-morrow. Do no end of good, and bring on the hay.”
“Ya-a-as, I suppose so,” drawled Bray; “but do a confounded deal of harm!” and he gazed at the sleeves of his glossy Saville-row surtout.
“O, never mind your coat, man!” laughed Charley. “See how it lays the dust!”
“Ya-a-as, just so,” drawled Bray. “I shall take this short cut and get home. Only a shower! Bye-bye! See you to-morrow! Come to lunch.”
The ragged lemon glove was waved to Charley as its owner turned down a side lane; and now that his costume was completely disordered and wet, he made no scruple about digging his spurs into his mare’s flanks, and galloping homewards; while, heedless of the sharply-falling rain, Charley gently cantered on towards the town.
“Damsels in distress!” exclaimed the young man suddenly. “‘Bai Jove!’ as Long-ears says. Taken refuge from the rain beneath a tree! Leaves, young and weak, completely saturated—impromptu shower—bath! What shall I do? Lend them my horse? No good. They would not ride double, like Knight Templars. Ride off, then, for umbrellas, I suppose. Why didn’t that donkey stop a little longer? and then he could have done it.”
So mused Charley Vining as he cantered up to where, beneath a spreading elm by the roadside, two ladies were waiting the cessation of the rain—faring, though, very little better than if they had stood in the open. One was a fashionably-dressed, tall, dark, bold beauty, black of eye and tress, and evidently in anything but the best of tempers with the weather; the other a fair pale girl, in half-mourning, whose yellow hair was plainly braided across her white forehead, but only to be knotted together at the back in a massive cluster of plaits, which told of what a glorious golden mantle it could have shed over its owner, rippling down far below the waist, and ready, it seemed, to burst from prisoning comb and pin. There was something ineffably sweet in her countenance, albeit there was a subdued, even sorrowful look as her shapely little head was bent towards her companion, and she was evidently speaking as Charley cantered up.
“Sorry to see you out in this, Miss Bray,” he cried, raising his low-crowned hat. “What can I do?—Fetch umbrellas and shawls? Speak the word.”
“O, how kind of you, Mr Vining!” exclaimed the dark maiden, with brightening eyes and flushing cheeks. “But really I should not like to trouble you.”
“Trouble? Nonsense!” cried Charley. “Only speak before you get wet through.”