“If you think best,” said Anderson, emphatically.  “Really, Mrs. Griggs, I cannot settle this matter for you.  You often trust people in your business.  You must decide yourself.”

The dressmaker arose.  “Well, I guess it’s all right,” said she.  “She’s a lovely girl, and so are they all.  Her mother seems sort of childish, but she’s real sweet-spoken.  I guess it’s all right, but I’d heard some things, and I thought I would ask you what you thought.  I thought it wouldn’t do any harm.  Now I feel a good deal easier about it.  Good-afternoon.  What a tempest we’ve had!”

“Yes,” said Anderson.  “Good-afternoon.”  He was conscious of a mental giddiness as he regarded her.

“We needed it, and I do think it has cooled the air a little.  I’m very much obliged.  I don’t suppose there is any use in my offering to pay you, now you’re in the grocery business?”

“Certainly not.  I have done nothing to admit of any question of payment,” replied Anderson, curtly.

“Well, I s’pose you throw it in along with the butter and eggs,” said Madame Griggs, with a return of her slight coquetry.  “By-the-way, I wish you’d send over five pounds of that best butter.  Good-afternoon.”

“Good-afternoon.”

The dressmaker turned in the doorway and looked back.  “I’m so glad to have my mind settled about it,” she said, with a pathos which overcame her absurdity and vulgarity.  “I do work awful hard, and it doesn’t seem as if I could lose my money.”  She appeared suddenly tragic in her cheap muslin and her frizzes.  She looked old and her features sharpened out rigidly.

Anderson, looking after her, felt both bewilderment and compunction.  He thought for a moment of going after her and saying something further; then he heard a flutter and a quick sweet voice, and he knew that Charlotte had come for her hat.  He heard her say:  “Where?  Oh, I see; all covered up so nicely.  Thank you.  I did not come before, because the trees were dripping.  Thank you.”  Then there was a silence.

Anderson got his hat and went out through the store.  The old clerk was fussing over some packages on the counter.

“That young lady came for her hat,” he remarked.

“Did she?”

“Yes.  She’s a pretty-spoken girl.  Her sister’s goin’ to git married before long, I hear.”

Anderson stopped and stared at him.  “No; this is the one.”

“No; her sister.  I had it straight.”

Anderson went out.  Everything was wonderful outside.  The world was purified of dust and tarnish as a soul of sin.  The worn prosaicness of nature was adorned as with jewels.  Everything glittered; a thousand rainbows seemed to hang on the drenched trees.  New blossoms looked out like new eyes of rapture; every leaf had a high-light of joy.  Anderson drew a long breath.  The air was alive with the breath of the sea from which the fresh wind blew.  He walked home with a quick step like a boy.  He was smiling, and fast to his breast, like a beloved child, he clasped his dream again.