Betty looked after her a minute, and then saying, "Those who have the care of you have their hands full," she hurried on; but with all her haste she was like one who had been dipped in a well before she got in.
Almost the moment in which the two had parted, the shower had come down in right good earnest, driving and gathering and splashing the dust up on Betty's white stockings, and causing her to be very glad that she had not put on her best-made bonnet and new black ribbons. Betty had never worn a coloured bonnet in her life.
In the meantime Miss Bessy was flying along the field, throwing up the wet at every step from the long grass. The pins in her shoes at first acted as spurs, pricking her for many steps, and then crooking and giving way; so that she had the comfort of running slipshod the rest of the
way. Her shoes, being of stuff, were so thoroughly soaked, in a little time, that they became quite heavy. The gate at the end of the field was locked, of course; who ever came to the end of a field in a pelting shower, and did not find it locked? It was a five-barred gate, and Bessy could have got over it easily if John had not most carefully interlaced the two upper bars with thorns and brambles—for what purpose we don't know, but so it was.
Bessy tried to pull some of them out, and in so doing thoroughly soaked her gloves, and then only succeeded in pulling aside one or two of them; but she mounted the gate, and in coming down, her foot slipping, she fell flat on the ground, leaving part of her frock on the thorns, which at the time she did not perceive.
"It can't be helped," she thought, as she rose again, and ran on to the house without further misfortune. She thought herself lucky in getting in by the front door without being seen; and her aunt was not at home, which was another piece of luck, she believed; and she hastened to change her dress, cramming all her wet things into a closet in the room used for hanging up frocks and gowns when taken off. She did not, as it happened, throw her frock and bonnet on the floor of the closet; and she thought she had been very careful when she hung the frock on a peg and the bonnet over it. She had some trouble in getting off her wet gloves, which stuck as close to her hands as if they had been part of them; and these, with the shoes and other inferior parts of her dress, found their places on the floor of the closet. They were all out of the way before her aunt could come; for though it had ceased to rain as soon as she came in, she knew it would take some time for the walk from the Parsonage House.
Such good use did Bessy make of her time that she had
clean linen and her everyday gown on before Mrs. Goodriche came in.
The first inquiry which Mrs. Fairchild and Mrs. Goodriche made was whether the young people and Betty had escaped the shower. Lucy, who knew no more than that they had all come in soon after each other, answered:
"Oh yes, but we had a run for it."