He followed her, however, pressed close beside her, and sought to shelter her a little from the slanting rain. And it was a wild, mad race on the part of that young couple, almost linked together, their elbows touching as they sped on and on, as if lifted from the ground, carried off by all that rushing, howling water which poured down so ragefully. It was as though a thunder-blast bore them along. But at the very moment when they sprang from their bicycles in the yard of the farm the rain ceased, and the sky became blue once more. Rose was laughing like a lunatic, and looked very flushed, but she was soaked to such a point that water streamed from her clothes, her hair, her hands. You might have taken her for some fairy of the springs who had overturned her urn on herself. "Well, the _fête_ is complete," she exclaimed breathlessly. "All the same, we are the first home." She then darted upstairs to comb her hair and change her gown. But to gain just a few minutes, eager as she was to cook the crawfish, she did not take the trouble to put on dry linen. She wished the pot to be on the fire with the water, the white wine, the carrots and spices, before the family arrived. And she came and went, attending to the fire and filling the whole kitchen with her gay activity, like a good housewife who was glad to display her accomplishments, while her betrothed, who had also come downstairs again after changing his clothes, watched her with a kind of religious admiration. At last, when the whole family had arrived, the folks of the brake and the pedestrians also, there came a rather sharp explanation. Mathieu and Marianne were angry, so greatly had they been alarmed by that rush through the storm. "There was no sense in it, my girl," Marianne repeated. "Did you at least change your linen?" "Why yes, why yes!" replied Rose. "Where are the crawfish?" Mathieu meantime was lecturing Frédéric. "You might have broken your necks," said he; "and, besides, it is by no means good to get soaked with cold water when one is hot. You ought to have stopped her." "Well, she insisted on going on, and whenever she insists on anything, you know, I haven't the strength to prevent her." At last Rose, in her pretty way, put an end to the reproaches. "Come, that's enough scolding; I did wrong, no doubt. But won't anybody compliment me on my _court-bouillon_? Have you ever known crawfish to smell as nice as that?" The lunch was wonderfully gay. As they were twenty, and wished to have a real rehearsal of the wedding feast, the table had been set in a large gallery adjoining the ordinary dining-room. This gallery was still bare, but throughout the meal they talked incessantly of how they would embellish it with shrubs, garlands of foliage, and clumps of flowers. During the dessert they even sent for a ladder with the view of indicating on the walls the main lines of the decorations.