Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/23

 took her hand. "Don't mind, do you? Just something to hold on to, you know."

She smiled wanly and clung tightly to his hand, shaking her head.

"I don't feel so scared," she said. "Isn't it almost over?"

"Pretty nearly now," he replied cheerfully. "First thing we know the sun will be out and we'll be steaming like—like a couple of clams!"

She tried to smile at his simile, but a jagged flash rent the sky asunder above the tops of the drooping trees and she closed her eyes again and clenched Gordon's hand convulsively so that he flinched as his ring bit into the flesh. He had a chance to look at her then. She looked absurdly small and helpless. Her hat, a narrow-rimmed Panama with a green and white scarf, had slipped to one side, revealing a good deal of soft brown hair. She was decidedly pretty, even now, frightened and bedraggled as she was, and Gordon felt a surge of big-brotherly pity.

"It's a darned shame," he muttered.

The girl heard him and opened her eyes.

"I'm—so silly," she said faintly.

Her eyes, he saw, were very deeply blue, almost