UNDER THE PINES WITH DICK.
LIKE Tom and Ann Eliza, Jerrie and Dick had run when they saw how fast the storm was coming, but it was of no use, for by the time they entered the park, the shortest route to the cottage, the rain came down in torrents, and drenched them to the skin in a few moments. Jerrie's hat was wrenched off, as Ann Eliza's had been, by the wind, which tossed her long golden hair about in a most fantastic fashion. But Dick put his hat upon her head, and would have given her his coat had she allowed it.
"No, Dick," she said, laughingly, as she saw him about to divest himself of it. "Keep your coat. I am wet enough without that. But what a storm, and how dark it grows. We shall break our necks stumbling along at this rate."
Just then a broad glare of lightning illuminated the darkness, and showed Dick the four pines close at hand. He knew the place well, for, with the Tracy children, he had often played there when a boy, and knew that the thick boughs would afford them some protection from the storm.
"By jove, we are in luck!" he said. "Here's the pine room, as we used to call it when you played you were Marie Antoinette and had your head cut off. I can remember just how I felt when your white sun-bonnet, with Mrs. Crawford's false hair pinned in it, dropped into the basket, and how awful it seemed when you played dead so long that we almost thought you were; and when you came to life, the way you imitated the cries of a French mob, I would have sworn there were a hundred voices instead of one, yelling, 'Down with the nobility!' You were a wonderful actress, Jerrie, and it is a marvel you have not gone upon the stage."
While he talked he was groping for the bench under the pines, where they sat down, Dick seating himself upon the parasol which Jerrie had left there that morning after her interview with Tom.
"Hallo! what's this?" he said, drawing the parasol from under him. "An umbrella, as I live! What good fairy do you suppose left it here for us?"
Jerrie could not tell him that she had left it there, and she said nothing; while he opened and held it so that every drop of rain which slipped from it fell upon her neck and trickled down her back.
"Great Cæsar! that was a roarer!" Dick said, as the peal of thunder which had so frightened Ann Eliza burst over their heads, and, echoing through the woods, went bellowing off in the direction of the river. "That's a stunner, but I rather like it and like being here, too. I've wanted a chance to speak to you ever since—well, ever since this morning when I saw you in that bewildering costume which showed your feet and your arms so—you know—and that thingumbob in your head, and the red stockings—and"—Here Dick became hopelessly confused and not knowing what to say next waited for Jerrie to speak.
But Jerrie did not speak, because of the sudden alarm which possessed her. She could not see Dick's face, but in his voice she had recognized a tone heard in Tom's that morning when she sat with him under the pines as she was sitting now with Dick and he had asked her to be his wife. Something told her that Dick was feeling for her hands, which she resolutely put behind her out of his way, and as he could not find them, he wound his arm around her and held her fast, while he told her how much he loved her.