“I am very glad,” Anderson replied, politely. He read a sign fastened beneath the window which framed the girl's head—“Madame Estelle Griggs, Modiste.” He reflected that she was the Banbridge dressmaker, and that Charlotte was probably having her trousseau made there, which was a deduction that only a masculine mind of vivid imagination could have evolved.
Charlotte was gazing eagerly across at her sister. “It does not rain nearly so hard now,” said she. “I think I might venture.” She looked irresolutely at her hat on the counter.
“I can let you have an umbrella,” said Anderson.
“Thank you,” said Charlotte, “but my hair is still so wet, and my hat is lined with pink chiffon, you know.”
“Yes,” said Anderson, respectfully. He did not know what pink chiffon was, but he understood that water would injure it.
“If I might leave my hat here,” said Charlotte, “until I come back—”
“Certainly,” replied Anderson.
“Then I think I can go now. No, thank you; I won't take the umbrella. I am about as wet as I can be now, and, besides, I like to feel the rain on my shoulders.”
With a careful but wary gathering up of her white skirts, with chary disclosures of lace and embroidery and little skipping shoes, she was gone in a snowy whirl through the mist across the street. She seemed to fly over the puddles. The girl's head disappeared from the opposite window and Anderson heard quite distinctly the outburst of laughter and explanation.
“You had better get a sheet of tissue-paper and put it over that,” he said to Sam Riggs, and he pointed at Charlotte's hat on the counter. Then he went back to his office and wrote some letters. He resolved that he would not see Charlotte when she returned for her hat.