"No, tell me where to put it; you mustn't get any of this rain on you," and Richard Shelby Brown followed Hertha as she led the way into the kitchen.
Together they put the umbrella into the washtub where it could drip harmlessly, and then, divested of his coat and hat, the young man went with his hostess into the front room where she insisted that he sit close to the radiator to get dry.
When she had seated him to her satisfaction and was back in her chair by the table there was silence. Now that Dick Brown's bodily wants were cared for, Hertha began to question herself how he had ever gotten there, and to wonder whether she should not be angry with him for following her uninvited to her home. But she was too homesick, too much in need of companionship, not to feel a little pleasure in seeing him, his long legs tucked under his straight chair, his thin face making a grotesque silhouette against the window shade. He was certainly homely and a pusher, just an ordinary "hill billy," as he had described himself. She decided that since he had come uninvited he must begin the conversation.
Dick Brown, as though appreciating his position, opened his mouth to speak and then sneezed—not once, but a number of times.
"You've taken a cold already," Hertha said sympathetically. "You shouldn't have come out to-night."
"No, I haven't, indeed I haven't. I'm just getting over one."
"How long have you had it?"
"About a month."
"I believe you got it that morning in the park. You shouldn't have given me your overcoat."
"That had nothing to do with it!" Brown spoke with a kindly bluster. "Nothing to do with it. Don't you think that for a minute. You see, after you left, I got playing with the kids and they squeezed snow down my neck and I lambasted them and we had a grand lark. It was mighty fine, but I learned that snow melts and then——"