“Yes,” said Anderson.  “We needed rain.”

Just then the world seemed swimming in blue light and there was a terrific crash.  Anderson, who never thought of any personal fear in a tempest, looked rather apprehensively at the girl.  He recalled his mother’s fear of draughts.

“Perhaps you had better move back a little; that was quite near,” he said.  Somehow the little fears and precautions which he scorned for himself seemed to apply quite reasonably to this little, tender, pretty creature with the lightning playing around her and the thunder breaking over her defenceless head.

Charlotte laughed.  “Oh, I am not afraid,” said she.  Then she added, quite innocently, with more of personal appeal than she had ever used towards him, “Are you?”

“No,” said Anderson.

“I like it,” said she, staring out at the swaying, brandishing maples, and the street which ran like a river, with now and then a boiling pool.

“I am afraid you are wet,” said Anderson.

“Yes,” said she, “but that is nothing.  My dress won’t hurt.  It is just white lawn, you know.  All that would be hurt is my hat, and that is hardly damp.  I took it off.”  She held it up carefully on one hand, and gazed solicitously at it.  “It is my best hat,” said she, simply.  “No, I don’t think it is hurt at all.”  She looked sharply towards the counter.  “The counter is clean, isn’t it?” said she.  “I might lay my hat there.  I don’t want to put it on until my hair gets dry.”

The old clerk smiled covertly, the boy grinned at her in a fascinated way.  Anderson regarded her with worshipful amazement.  This little, artless revelation of the innermost vanity of a woman’s heart touched him.  It was to him inconceivable that she should so care for the welfare of that flower-bedecked oval of straw, and yet he thought it adorable of her to care.  He stared at the hat as if it had been a halo, then he turned and looked anxiously at the counter.

“Get a sheet of clean paper,” he ordered the boy, and frowned at him for his grin.

The boy obeyed solemnly.

“I think that will not soil your hat,” Anderson said, when the preparations were complete.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, and handed him the hat.

Anderson touched it gingerly as if it were alive, and placed it upside down on the clean sheet of paper.

“The other way up, please,” said she, and Anderson changed it in alarm.

“I hope I have not injured it,” he said.

She was laughing openly at him.  “No,” she replied, “but you put it right on the roses.  Men don’t know how to handle girls’ hats, do they?”

“No; I fear they don’t,” replied Anderson.