"Umbrellas are not what they were in my days," he says, trying to smile. "You are quite as wet as Cis, though you do not proclaim your sufferings nearly so loudly. Had not you better go and see whether the chambermaid owns two pairs of dry stockings?"
She lifts her eyes with wistful gratitude to his. "This is my treat," she says slowly; "my first treat to you; oh, poor Jim!"
There is a depth of compassion in her tone as disproportioned to the apparent cause as had been Mrs. Le Marchant's anxiety for her daughter's return, and beneath it he winces.
"Why do you pity me?" he inquires half indignantly.
"Am I—
"'A milksop; one that never in his life
Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?'
What do I care for a little rain?" Adding cheerfully, "You shall give me a second treat, dear; we will come here again by ourselves when the sun shines."
"By ourselves—when the sun shines!" echoes she, as if repeating a lesson; and then she goes off docilely, in obedience to his suggestion, in search of dry raiment.
He rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant, whose unaccountable fears have led her beyond the house's shelter out into the rain, where she stands looking down that river of mud which represents the road by which she hopes to see the truants reappear.
"I think you are unnecessarily alarmed," he says, in a reassuring and remonstrating tone. "What harm could have happened to them?"