Our Mr. Wrenn

"And leave me here in the darknesses and wetnesses? Not a chance. The rain'll soon be over, anyway. Really, I don't mind a bit. I think it's rather fun."

Her voice was natural again, natural and companionable and brave. She laughed as she stroked her wet shoulder and held his hand, sitting quietly and bidding him listen to the soft forlorn sound of the rain on the thatch.

But the rain was not soon over, and their dangling position was very much like riding a rail.

"I'm so uncomfortable!" fretted Istra.

"See here, Istra, please, I think I'd better go see if I can't find a house for you to get dry in."

"I feel too wretched to go any place. Too wretched to move."

"Well, then, I'll make a fire here. There ain't much danger."

"The place will catch fire," she began, querulously.

But he interrupted her. "Oh, let the darn place catch fire! I'm going to make a fire, I tell you!"

"I don't want to move. It'll just be another kind of discomfort, that's all. Why couldn't you try and take a little bit of care of me, anyway?"

"Oh, hon-ey!" he wailed, in youthful bewilderment. "I did try to get you to stay at that hotel in town and get some rest."

"Well, you ought to have made me. Don't you realize that I took you along to take care of me?"

"Uh--"

"Now don't argue about it. I can't stand argument all the time."

He thought instantly of Lee Theresa Zapp quarreling with her mother, but he said nothing. He gathered the driest bits of thatch and wood he could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while she sat sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a compact and safe little fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, cheerily, "Come on now, honey; here's a regular home and hearthstone for you."

She slipped down from the manger edge and stood in front of him, looking into his eyes--which were level with her own.

"You are good to me," she half whispered, and smoothed his cheek, then slipped down on the outspread coat, and murmured, "Come; sit here by me, and we'll both get warm."

All night the rain dribbled, but no one came to drive them away from the fire, and they dozed side by side, their hands close and their garments steaming. Istra fell asleep, and her head drooped on his shoulder. He straightened to bear its weight, though his back twinged with stiffness, and there he sat unmoving, through an hour of pain and happiness and confused meditation, studying the curious background--the dark roof of broken thatch, the age-corroded walls, the littered earthen floor. His hand pressed lightly the clammy smoothness of the wet khaki of her shoulder; his wet sleeve stuck to his arm, and he wanted to pull it free. His eyes stung. But he sat tight, while his mind ran round in circles, considering that he loved Istra, and that he would not be entirely sorry when he was no longer the slave to her moods; that this adventure was the strangest and most romantic, also the most idiotic and useless, in history.