"Oh, he'll come all right," answered her companion, quickly. "I'll take
Tibbs's buggy and go down there right off. Eph won't lose no time gittin'
here!" And with this encouraging assurance he was flying forth, when he,
like the others, was detained by her solicitous care. She was a born
mother. He protested that in the buggy he would be perfectly sheltered;
besides, there wasn't another umbrella about the place; he liked to get
wet, anyway; had always loved rain. The end of it was that he went away in
a sort of tremor, wearing her rain-cloak over his shoulders, which
garment, as it covered its owner completely when she wore it, hung almost
to his knees. He darted around a corner; and there, breathing deeply,
tenderly removed it; then, borrowing paper and cord at a neighboring
store, wrapped it neatly, and stole back to the printing-office on the
ground floor of the "Herald" building, and left the package in charge of
Bud Tipworthy, mysteriously charging him to care for it as for his own
life, and not to open it, but if the lady so much as set one foot out of
doors before his return, to hand it to her with the message: "He borrowed
another off J. Hankins."
Left alone, the lady went to the desk and stood for a time looking gravely
at Harkless's chair. She touched it gently, as she had touched it once
before that morning, and then she spoke to it as if he were sitting there,
and as she would not have spoken, had he been sitting there.
"You didn't want gratitude, did you?" she whispered, with sad lips.
Soon she smiled at the blue ribbons, patted the chair gaily on the back,
and, seizing upon pencil and pad, dashed into her work with rare energy.
She bent low over the desk, her pencil moving rapidly, and, except for a
momentary interruption from Mr. Tipworthy, she seemed not to pause for
breath; certainly her pencil did not. She had covered many sheets when
her father returned; and, as he came in softly, not to disturb her, she
was so deeply engrossed she did not hear him; nor did she look up when
Parker entered, but pursued the formulation of her fast-flying ideas with
the same single purpose and abandon; so the two men sat and waited while
their chieftainess wrote absorbedly. At last she glanced up and made a
little startled exclamation at seeing them there, and then gave them
cheery greeting. Each placed several scribbled sheets before her, and she,
having first assured herself that Fisbee had bought his overshoes, and
having expressed a fear that Mr. Parker had found her umbrella too small,
as he looked damp (and indeed he was damp), cried praises on their notes
and offered the reporters great applause.