He laughed, disentangling himself as best he might from the wet bondage of her heavy locks, but she, reddening vividly through all her clear, sun-browned skin, gave her attention to the garment that he held. It seemed to her a strange thing that he should offer to lend it. She had been on rainy expeditions with many men, both English and Virginian, while none that she could remember had ever before offered to protect her in such wise from the inclemency of her native heavens.
She looked down a little consciously at the weather-stained tan-color of the little coat. She felt that it would be an insult to suggest to so mighty a pedestrian the idea of taking cold; at the same time she was afraid that such would be the memento he would bear away with him from the top of Peter’s Mountain. As for herself, she was as accustomed to wind and rain as one of the big oxeye daisies in her own fields.
[Illustration: ON THE TOP OF PETER’S MOUNTAIN.]
“There’s some sandwiches an’ a glass in that basket,” she said, or rather shrieked, to Roden. He went to get them, tacking through the stiff wind with much dexterity, and they partook of thin slices of Aunt Tishy’s bread and Virginian ham with a heroic disregard of the downpour. All at once they were confronted by a small ebon figure, hatless and breathless.
“_Popo!_” said Miss Herrick; “what in the name o’ sense are you doin’ here?”
“Oh, Miss Faginia, Miss Faginia,” howled the little black, “de lightnin’ dun gone thoo Marse Johnson’s house an’ kill he an’ he horg! An’ I wuz so skeered ’bout you I jess took out an’ run up de mounting to see ef you wuz all right.”
“Well, I am,” said his mistress. “You pore little thing, how wet you are! Come and get here under these branches.”
The faithful Popocatepetl came and crouched on his heels at her side. He was drenched to the skin, and his dark hide showed in patches through his shirt of some thin white stuff, which elsewhere puffed out in irregular blisters, like the wet linen in a washer-woman’s tub. From a strange freak of nature, not unusual in these Virginian mountains, his knotty wool was of a pale tan-color. It is a mistake to think that the little negro perpetually grins. Nothing absolutely could have been more full of woe and resignation than the expression of the young Popo as he watched with Pokeberry the ceaseless flood that swept over hill and valley.