"I don't like t-thunder," she told him absurdly, as a muttering roll shook the air above them.
His hand, still hovering over her hair, went down against her cheek and pressed her to him. She could hear his heart beating. It sounded as loudly in his breast as her own. She had a sense of sudden, unpremeditated emotion.
She felt his lips upon the back of her neck.
She tried to draw away, and suddenly he let her go and gave a short, unsteady laugh.
"It's all right, Ri-Ri—you're my little pal, aren't you?" he murmured.
Unseeingly she nodded, drawing a long, shaken breath. Then as he started to draw her nearer again she moved away, putting up her arms to her hair in a gesture that instinctively shielded the confusion of her face.
"No? . . . All right, Ri-Ri, I won't crowd you," he murmured. "But oh, you little Beauty Girl, you ought to be in a cage with bars about. . . . You ought to wear a mask—a regular diving outfit——"
Unexpectedly Ri-Ri recovered her self-possession. Again she fled from the consummation of the scene.
"I shall wear nothing so unbecoming," she flung lightly back. "And it has not been raining for ever so long. Unless you wish to build a nest in the forest, like a new fashion of oriole, Signor Byrd, you had better hurry and catch up with the others."
Johnny did not speak as they came out of the woods and in silence they hurried along the path on the river's edge.