‘This is a jolly go,’ he said to himself, as he went on; and then he thought of Dick and Jerrie, and wondered how they were getting through the storm, and if she had sprained her ankle and Dick was carrying her in his arms.

’He will sweat some, if he is, for Jerrie is twice as heavy as Peterkin’s daughter;’ and at the very idea Tom laughed out loud, thinking that he should greatly prefer to have Jerrie’s strength and weight in his arms to his light, slim, little girl, who neither spoke nor moved until he laughed, and then there came in smothered tones from the region of his vest: 

‘Oh, Tom, how can you laugh?  Do you think it such fun?’

‘Fun!  Thunder!  Anything but fun!’ was his gruff reply, as he went on more rapidly now, for they were in the grounds of Le Bateau, and the lights from the house were distinctly visible at no great distance away.  ‘We are here at last.  Thank the Lord.’ he said, as he went up the steps and pulled sharply at the bell.

‘Let me down.  I can stand on one foot,’ Ann Eliza said; and nothing loth Tom put her down, a most forlorn and dilapidated piece of humanity as she stood leaning against him with the light of the piazza lamp falling full upon her.

Her little French boots, which had partly done the mischief, were spoiled, and the heel of one of them had been nearly wrenched off when she stumbled over the stone.  Her India muslin, with its sash, and ribbons, and streamers, was torn in places and bedraggled with mud.  She had lost her hat in the woods, and the wind and the rain had held high carnival in her loosely-arranged hair, whose color Tom so detested, and which streamed down her back in many little wet tags, giving her the look of a drowned rat after it has been tortured in a trap.

Old Peterkin was reading his evening paper when Tom’s sharp summons sounded through the house, making him jump from the chair, as he exclaimed: 

‘Jiminy hoe-cakes!  Who can that be in this storm?’

He had seen Billy off in the train, and had returned home just as the rain began to fall.  Naturally both he and his wife had felt some anxiety on Ann Eliza’s account, but had concluded that if the storm continued she would remain at Grassy Spring, and if it cleared in time they would send the carriage for her.  So neither thought of her when the loud ring came, startling them both so much.  It was Peterkin himself who went to the door, gorgeous in a crimson satin dressing gown which came to his feet, but which no amount of pulling would make meet together over his ponderous stomach.  An oriental smoking cap was on his head, the big tassel hanging almost in his eyes, and a half-burned cigar between his fingers.

‘Good George of Uxbridge!’ he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon Tom, from whose soaked hat the water was dripping, and upon Ann Eliza leaning against him, her pale face quivering with pain, and her eyes full of tears.  ‘George of Uxbridge!  What’s up?  What ails the girl!’