"Now, I don't want you to think that mother isn't just as good as gold, for she is. But she doesn't take such interest in garden things as father does, and to her all peas are peas, provided they are good ones. But when father heard what she had done I know that he felt exactly as if he had been stabbed in one of his tenderest places. He did not say one word, and he walked right out of the house, and since that they haven't spoken to each other. It was dreadful to sit at dinner, neither of them saying a word to the other, and only speaking to me. It was all so different from the way things generally are that I can scarcely bear it.
"And I went out this afternoon for no other reason than to give them a chance to make it up between them. I thought perhaps they would do it better if they were alone with each other. But of course I do not know what has happened, and things may be worse than they were. I could not take a stranger into the house at such a time--they would not like to be found not speaking to each other--and, besides, I do not know--"
Here I interrupted her, and begged her not to give another thought to the subject. I wanted very much to go on, and in every way it was the best thing I could do.
As I finished speaking she pointed out a pretty house standing back from the road, and told me that was where she lived. In a very few minutes after that I had run her up to the steps of her piazza and was assisting her to dismount from her wheel.
"It is awful!" she said. "This rain is coming down like a cataract!"
"You must hurry in-doors," I answered. "Let me help you up the steps." And with this I took hold of her under the arms, and in a second I had set her down in front of the closed front door. I then ran down and brought up her wheel. "Do you think you can manage to walk in?" said I.
"Oh yes!" she said. "If I can't do anything else, I can hop. My mother will soon have me all right. She knows all about such things."
She looked at me with an anxious expression, and then said, "How do you think it would do for you to wait on the piazza until the rain is over?"
"Good-bye," I said, with a laugh, and bounding down to the front gate, where I had left my bicycle, I mounted and rode away.