Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/132

 dodged for his life and gained the sidewalk. But at eleven o'clock of a bright spring morning the east side of Broadway at Eighteenth Street is quite likely to be well thronged, and this morning was no exception. Gordon hurried southward, pushing and elbowing, with scant regard for the comfort of his fellow pedestrians, searching the crowd ahead with anxious eyes. He had almost given up hope when, the throng thinning at Seventeenth Street, he saw her walking briskly ahead of him. He caught up to her just as, glancing right and left, she was about to cross to the park. She turned before he could speak and her face paled and the deep blue eyes grew suddenly large and dark. Gordon's own cheeks whitened under their tan, and it was not until her small fingers lay in his insistent hand that words came to him.

"You see," he said then, with a smile that wouldn't stay straight, "I was right. The gods are kind, Miss Peggy-in-the-Rain."

The color crept slowly back into her face as she withdrew her hand. She smiled constrainedly. "Now you know," she said with a voice that, attempting to speak lightly, trembled a little, "what becomes of me when it doesn't rain." She