"Perhaps," ventured the doctor, "we really ought to go. I can't have you 'catch your death of cold,' Miss Harriet."
"I won't die of a cold, William," she said, her eyes narrowing.
And William swore at himself under his breath, but said, with clumsy jocularity: "Well, not if I can help it. But I don't know why you should be so sure; it might give you bronchitis for a year."
"I won't have bronchitis for a year," Miss Harriet said, gazing at the clowns.
And William King swore at himself again.
The rain increased to a downpour; little streams at first dripped, then poured, upon the thinning benches. The great centre pole was streaming wet; the clown stood in a puddle, and the red triangle on his chalk-white forehead melted into a pink smear.
"Really, Miss Harriet," William said, anxiously, "I'm afraid—"
"If you're afraid for yourself, I'll go," she said; "but we ought to wait for the grand concert. (Ah! there's the man with the red balloons. If you had a half-dozen children, Willy, as you ought to have, I'd buy him out.) Well, are you sugar or salt, to be so scared of a drop of rain?"
She did not look afraid of rain herself when she got up and pushed past the scattered spectators, her hair glistening with drops, her cheeks red, her eyes clear. "William," she said, when they got outside and were hurrying along to catch the stage for Old Chester—"William, that has done me good. I feel superbly. Do you know, I haven't had an instant's pain since I first spoke of the thing to you? That's three days entirely free. Why, such a thing hasn't happened in—in three months. Just think of that—entirely free. William, I'll cheat you doctor-men yet." She looked at him with glowing courage. "I feel so well," she said.
She held out her hand, there in the rain on the black cinder-path, and William King struck his into it with a sort of shout.