"We will surely get soaked today," grumbled Miss Palmer, but not lightly, for she trembled on observing the terrific downpour.
"How much further is it to this place we are going?" he inquired. To him, it seemed they had been riding an hour. "You do not mean to tell me, that all that stretch of forest and open country before we got to the forest, is a part of Effingham?"
"We will soon be there now," she evaded, and then added: "Effingham includes everything that electric cars operating in and out of the city reaches," and laughed. He believed her.
At last, the big car came to a stop. They alighted in the downpour, and rushed to shelter beneath the porch of a small grocery store, conducted by a kind-faced little colored woman.
"Oh, how-do, Mrs. Brown," cried Miss Palmer, when the latter, upon seeing them, opened the door and bade them enter. "I'm certainly glad to see you," whereupon they kissed, and Miss Palmer cheered the dark atmosphere with many cute words.
"Permit me, Mrs. Brown, to introduce Mr.——I forget your name?" "You see, Mr. Wyeth," said Miss Palmer, with a delightful smile, "I taught out here these past three years, and Mrs. Brown is one of my many friends. Yonder is the school," she pointed to an old frame building, that could barely be outlined through the storm. "They have transferred me back to the city again," she turned to Mrs. Brown. "So I regret to say that I shall not be with you next year."
Miss Palmer had a way of finishing her sentences with a show of her fine little teeth; and her chin, at such a time, reached to a fine point, which at first amused Sidney. She would bestow upon him a coquettish smile, when she found his eyes searching her mysteriously.
"Mr. Wyeth," said she, with her arm linked now within Mrs. Brown's, "is general agent for a new book by a Negro author, The Tempest, and for which I have accepted the local agency—why not," she broke off suddenly, "show Mrs. Brown the book?"
"She is clever and suggestive at the same time," thought Sidney, almost aloud; but he forthwith obeyed the suggestion with much pleasure, and took Mrs. Brown's order amid the rainfall, collecting twenty-five cents as a guarantee of good faith, in addition.
It had ceased raining as suddenly as it had commenced. They turned to leave the store, and, as he was passing Miss Palmer, he bumped against her roughly. She was looking at his picture on the frontispiece now, with apparent suspicion. He pretended not to see her or her suspicion, that had now grown to excitement. She was yet apparently in some doubt, as she tried to make connections.