To this Clarence directed the horses.  He lifted Clover down.  She half sat, half leaned on the slope of the rock, well under cover, while he stretched himself at full length on a higher ledge, and held the bridles fast.  The horses’ heads and the saddles were fairly well protected, but the hindquarters of the animals were presently streaming with water.

“This isn’t half-bad, is it?” Clarence said.  His mouth was so close to Clover’s ear that she could catch his words in spite of the noisy thunder and the roar of the descending rain.

“No; I call it fun.”

“You look awfully pretty, do you know?” was the next and very unexpected remark.

“Nonsense.”

“Not nonsense at all.”

At that moment a carriage dashed rapidly by, the driver guiding the horses as well as he could between the points of an umbrella, which constantly menaced his eyes.  Other travellers in the pass had evidently been surprised by the storm besides themselves.  The lady who held the umbrella looked out, and caught the picture of the group under the cliff.  It was a suggestive one.  Clover’s hat was a little pushed forward by the rock against which she leaned, which in its turn pushed forward the waving rings of hair which shaded her forehead, but did not hide her laughing eyes, or the dimples in her pink cheeks.  The fair, slender girl, the dark, stalwart young fellow so close to her, the rain, the half-sheltered horses,—­it was easy enough to construct a little romance.

The lady evidently did so.  It was what photographers call an “instantaneous effect,” caught in three seconds, as the carriage whirled past; but in that fraction of a minute the lady had nodded and flashed a brilliant, sympathetic smile in their direction, and Clover had nodded in return, and laughed back.

“A good many people seem to have been caught as we have,” she said, as another streaming vehicle dashed by.

“I wish it would rain for a week,” observed Clarence.

“My gracious, what a wish!  What would become of us if it did?”

“We should stay here just where we are, and I should have you all to myself for once, and nobody could come in to interfere with me.”

“Thank you extremely!  How hungry we should be!  How can you be so absurd, Clarence?”

“I’m not absurd at all.  I’m perfectly in earnest.”

“Do you mean that you really want to stay a week under this rock with nothing to eat?”

“Well, no; not exactly that perhaps,—­though if you could, I would.  But I mean that I would like to get you for a whole solid week to myself.  There is such a gang of people about always, and they all want you.  Clover,” he went on, for, puzzled at his tone, she made no answer, “couldn’t you like me a little?”

“I like you a great deal.  You come next to Phil and Dorry with me.”

“Hang Phil and Dorry!  Who wants to come next to them?  I want you to like me a great deal more than that.  I want you to love me.  Couldn’t you, Clover?”