Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/65

 it perhaps. Eddie might tell. Then she'd have to go away to a place where nobody knew her.

"Dot, answer me."

She said what was on her mind. "I'd be a bad girl."

"No, you wouldn't. A bad girl is something different. You'd never let anybody else touch you, would you?"

"I don't know," she said after a minute's hesitancy. "I never thought I would let you go the whole way with me."

It took time for the full meaning of her words to penetrate. When it did he looked at her face and found that her eyes had been waiting to meet his. "Do you mean that you are going to let me?"

"I guess so, Eddie." Pause. "Yes, I'm going to let you."

"Now?"

"If you want to."

"If I want to? Gee, Kid, you say crazy things."

The girl in the bright blue slicker was the first one in the house to discover that the rain had stopped. She charged down the stairs, feverishly anxious to be out of the small, dusty room that was her home.

"It isn't raining any more," she shouted to her friend who had the first floor front.

"It will be teeming again in a minute," was the gloomy response.

"Don't be silly," said the girl in the bright blue slicker. She swung down the hall singing cheerfully. "It ain't gonna rain no more, no more. It ain't gonna rain no more. How in the world can—"

The front door closed with a firm and solid sound, cutting off any further repetition of Wendall Hall's weather forecast.

Upstairs, Eddie and Dot looked at each other with timid little smiles hovering about their mouths.

"Do you remember—" began Dot.

"Yes," said Eddie.