“Stop, Billy.”  She was back again in the world of everyday.  “Get in, Mr. Rivers.  We are both late for our Dante.”  As she spoke, an oppressed pine below which he stood under a big umbrella was of a mind to bear its load no longer and let fall a bushel or so of snow on the clergyman’s cover.  His look of bewilderment and his upward glance as if for some human explanation routed from Ann’s mind everything except amusement over this calamity.

“You must not mind if I laugh.”  She took for granted the leave to laugh, as he said, “I don’t see where the fun comes in.  It is most disagreeable.”  The eloquent eyes expressed calamity.  It was really felt as if it had been a personal attack.

“It was a punishment for your utterly abominable politics.”  For the first time for months she was her unfettered self.  His mind was still on his calamity.  “I really staggered under it.”

“Shake it off and get in to the sleigh.  My husband ought to have all the big pines cut down.”  Rivers’s mind had many levels.  Sometimes they were on spiritual heights, or as now—­almost childlike.

“To stay indoors would be on the whole more reasonable,” he said, “or to have these trees along the avenue shaken.”

“I’d like the job,” ventured Billy.

“Keep quiet,” said Mrs. Ann.

“It is most uncomfortable as it melts,” said Rivers.

Ann thought of John Penhallow’s early adventure in the snow, and seeing how strangely real was Mark Rivers’s discomfort, remarked to herself that he was like a cat for dislike of being wet, and was thankful for her privilege of laughing inwardly.

Billy, who was, as Leila said, an unexpectable person, contributed to Ann Penhallow’s sense of there being still some available fun in a world where men were feebly imitating the vast slaughters of nature.  He considered the crushed umbrella, the felt hat awry, and the disconsolate figure.  “Parson do look crosser than a wet hen.”

Then too Rivers’s laugh set free her mirth, and Ann Penhallow laughed as she had not done for many a day.  “That is about my condition,” said Rivers.  “I shall go home and get into dry clothes.  Billy, you’re a poet.”

“Don’t like nobody to call me names,” grunted Billy.

“I wish James had heard that,” cried Ann, while Rivers gathered up the remains of his umbrella.

As Billy drove away, Mrs. Penhallow called back, “You will come to dinner to-day?”

“Thank you, but not to-day.”

As Ann came down the stairs to the hall, Penhallow was in the man’s attitude, with his back to the fire.  Leila with a hand on the mantel and a foot on the fender was talking to her uncle, an open letter in her hand.  Ann heard him say, “That was in October”—­and then—­“Why this must be a month old!”

“It must have been delayed.  He wrote a note after the fight at Belmont, and that was in October.  He did write once since then, but it was hardly worth sending.  As a letter writer, John is rather a failure, but this is longer.”  She laughed gaily as she spread open the letter.