Suddenly will-o'-the-wisp opportunity flickered before him, and in his high mood he paused not at all to consider it, but insanely chased it. He had just reached a crossing, and down the cross street, walking away from Noble, was the dim figure of a man carrying an umbrella. It was just perceptible that he was a fat man, struggling with seeming feebleness in the wind and making poor progress. Mr. Atwater, moving up Julia's Street, was out of sight from the cross street where struggled the fat man.
Noble ran swiftly down the cross street, jerked the umbrella from the fat man's grasp; ran back, with hoarse sounds dying out behind him in the riotous dusk; turned the corner, sped after Mr. Atwater, overtook him, and thrust the umbrella upon him. Then, not pausing the shortest instant for thanks or even recognition, the impulsive boy sped onward, proud and joyous in the storm, leaving his beneficiary far behind him.
In his young enthusiasm he had indeed done something for Mr. Atwater. In fact, Noble's kindness had done as much for Mr. Atwater as Julia's gentleness had done for Noble, but how much both Julia and Noble had done was not revealed in full until the next evening.
That was a warm and moonshiny night of air unusually dry, and yet Florence sneezed frequently as she sat upon the "side porch" at the house of her Great-Aunt Carrie and her Great-Uncle Joseph. Florence had a cold in the head, though how it got to her head was a process involved in the mysterious ways of colds, since Florence's was easily to be connected with Herbert's remark that he wouldn't ever be caught takin' his death o' cold sittin' on the damp grass in the night air just to listen to a lot o' tooty-tooty. It appeared from Florence's narrative to those interested listeners, Aunt Carrie and Uncle Joseph, that she had been sitting on the grass in the night air when both air and grass were extraordinarily damp. In brief, she had been at her post soon after the storm cleared on the preceding evening, but she had heard no tooty-tooty; her overhearings were of sterner stuff.
"Well, what did Julia say then?" Aunt Carrie asked eagerly.
"She said she'd go up and lock herself in her room and stuff cushions over her ears if grandpa didn't quit makin' such a fuss."
"And what did he say?"
"He made more rumpus than ever," said Florence. "He went on and on, and told the whole thing over and over again; he seemed like he couldn't tell it enough, and every time he told it his voice got higher and higher till it was kind of squealy. He said he'd had his raincoat on and he didn't want an umberella anyhow, and hadn't ever carried one a single time in fourteen years! And he took on about Noble Dill and all this and that about how you bet he knew who it was! He said he could tell Noble Dill in the dark any time by his cigarette smell, and, anyway, it wasn't too dark so's he couldn't see his skimpy little shoulders, and anyway he saw his face. And he said Noble didn't _hand_ him the umberella; he stuck it all down over him like he was somep'n on fire he wanted to put out; and before he could get out of it and throw it away this ole fat man that it belonged to and was chasin' Noble, he ran up to grandpa from behind and took hold of him, or somep'n, and they slipped, and got to fussin' against each other; and then after a while they got up and grandpa saw it was somebody he knew and told him for Heaven's sake why didn't he take his ole umberella and go on home; and so he did, because it was raining, and I guess he proba'ly had to give up; he couldn't out-talk grandpa."