So mused Charley Vining as he cantered up to where, beneath a spreading elm by the roadside, two ladies were waiting the cessation of the rain-- faring, though, very little better than if they had stood in the open. One was a fashionably-dressed, tall, dark, bold beauty, black of eye and tress, and evidently in anything but the best of tempers with the weather; the other a fair pale girl, in half-mourning, whose yellow hair was plainly braided across her white forehead, but only to be knotted together at the back in a massive cluster of plaits, which told of what a glorious golden mantle it could have shed over its owner, rippling down far below the waist, and ready, it seemed, to burst from prisoning comb and pin. There was something ineffably sweet in her countenance, albeit there was a subdued, even sorrowful look as her shapely little head was bent towards her companion, and she was evidently speaking as Charley cantered up. "Sorry to see you out in this, Miss Bray," he cried, raising his low-crowned hat. "What can I do?--Fetch umbrellas and shawls? Speak the word." "O, how kind of you, Mr Vining!" exclaimed the dark maiden, with brightening eyes and flushing cheeks. "But really I should not like to trouble you." "Trouble? Nonsense!" cried Charley. "Only speak before you get wet through." "Well, if you really--really, you know--would not mind," hesitated Laura Bray, who, in spite of the rain, was in no hurry to bring the interview to a close. "Wouldn't mind? Of course not!" echoed Charley, whose bold eyes were fixed upon Laura Bray's companion, who timidly returned his salute, and then shrank back, as he again raised his little deer-stalker hat from its curly throne. "Now, then," he exclaimed, "what's it to be?--shawls and Sairey Gamps of gingham and tape?" "No, no, Mr Vining! How droll you are!" laughed the beauty. "But if you really wouldn't mind--really, you know--" "I tell, you, Miss, Bray, that, I, shall, only, be, too, happy," said Charley, in measured tones. "Then, if you wouldn't mind riding to the Elms, and asking them to send the brougham, I should be so much obliged!" "All right!" cried Charley, turning his mare. "Max has only just left me." "But it seems such a shame to send you away through all this rain!" said Laura loudly. "Fudge!" laughed Charley, as, putting his mare at the hedge in front, she skimmed over it like a bird, and her owner galloped across country, to the great disadvantage of several crops of clover. "What a pity!" sighed Laura to herself, as she watched the retreating form. "And the rain will be over directly. I wonder whether he'll come back!" "Do you think we need wait?" said her companion gently. "The rain has ceased now, and the sun is breaking; through the clouds."