The company looked sympathetic, and she continued apologetically: “She is a good woman, but she is so tactless. She doesn’t know how to manage the little fellow. She should appeal to his reason, I think.” “It is sometimes difficult to get a quiet hearing,” observed the doctor. “Tiresome creatures, nurses,” the Magnificent Wreck added sympathetically. “I can remember how I hated _mine_.” “Can you?” the younger woman put in inadvertently, as though called upon to applaud a triumph of memory. “But what a beautiful child!” exclaimed the Magnificent one, declining issue with the other. “So like his father, as he stood there, his head thrown back. When he whirled past us just now, there was the gleam of the Viking in his eyes!” “Yes, all he needed was a carving-knife to be a first-class pirate,” Vessinger added lightly. The father laughed, but not heartily; and Vessinger, feeling the topic exhausted, turned to his blonde neighbor: “Mrs. Bellflower, there are real clouds in the sky out there. What do you think of our chances with the rain?” “You mustn’t go!” their host and hostess protested. Mrs. Simmons added in an undertone: “I wonder if it _could_ be the thunder-storm that upset poor little Oscar so completely? Thunder affects me, always.” Dr. Vessinger was at her elbow to say good-by. “It is charming to find you again,” he said, taking her hand and looking boldly into her face. “To find you in this--this splendid scene, with your charming child and your husband. You are looking so young that, if it were not for us others, I might shut my eyes and believe I was in Sicily!” He spoke deliberately, as though he wished to give two meanings to every word he uttered. The young woman’s color changed, and her hands played with the leaves of a book she had taken at random from the table. “You must come again, often--I want to see you,” she said abruptly, looking at him honestly. “I know you have done some things since that time, and I am glad of it!” “Thank you.” “Oh, come! This is nonsense. You aren’t going to slip away on any such easy excuse as that,” burst in Simmons. “See, your storm is passing around. And if it comes, what could be finer than a gallop back in the clear air after the rain has washed the dirt out? It will lay the dust, too.” “No, no!” delivered Mrs. Bellflower. “We don’t want to go yet, doctor. Maybe we can stay to dinner if it rains. Let’s go out to the terrace.” They stepped out of the open windows to the broad brick terrace that completed the east side of the house. Beneath them in the distance, to the eastward, lay the great city, and beyond they knew there was the sea. Over the lofty chimneys and massy ramparts of houses lowered the storm, which was spreading in two forks about the horizon. Slowly it was climbing up the dome of the sky toward them. An edging of gold fired the black mass from time to time.