Istra laughed: "Oh, isn't this great! We're real vagabonds now."
"Why! Doesn't that khaki soak through? Aren't you wet?"
"To the skin!" she shouted, gleefully. "And I don't care! We're doing something. Poor dear, is it worried? I'll race you to the top of the hill."
The dark bulk of a building struck their sight at the top, and they ran to it. Just now Mr. Wrenn was ready to devour alive any irate householder who might try to turn them out. He found the building to be a ruined stable-the door off the hinges, the desolate thatch falling in. He struck a match and, holding it up, standing straight, the master, all unconscious for once in his deprecating life of the Wrennishness of Mr. Wrenn, he discovered that the thatch above the horse-manger was fairly waterproof.
"Come on! Up on the edge of the manger, Istra," he ordered.
"This is a perfectly good place for a murder," she grinned, as they sat swinging their legs.
He could fancy her grinning. He was sure about it, and well content.
"Have I been so very grouchy, Mouse? Don't you want to murder me? I'll try to find you a long pin."
"Nope; I don't think so, much. I guess we can get along without it this time."
"Oh dear, dear! This is very dreadful. You're so used to me now that you aren't even scared of me any more."
"Gee! I guess I'll be scared of you all right as soon as I get you into a dry place, but I ain't got time now. Sitting on a manger! Ain't this the funniest place!... Now I must beat it out and find a house. There ought to be one somewheres near here."
"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.
Toward dawn she stirred, and, slipping stiffly from his position, he moved her so that her back, which was still wet, faced the fire. He built up the fire again, and sat brooding beside her, dozing and starting awake, till morning. Then his head bobbed, and he was dimly awake again, to find her sitting up straight, looking at him in amazement.
"It simply can't be, that's all.... Did you curl me up? I'm nice and dry all over now. It was very good of you. You've been a most commendable person.... But I think we'll take a train for the rest of our pilgrimage. It hasn't been entirely successful, I'm afraid."
"Perhaps we'd better."
For a moment he hated her, with her smooth politeness, after a night when she had been unbearable and human by turns. He hated her bedraggled hair and tired face. Then he could have wept, so deeply did he desire to pull her head down on his shoulder and smooth the wrinkles of weariness out of her dear face, the dearer because they had endured the weariness together. But he said, "Well, let's try to get some breakfast first, Istra."
With their garments wrinkled from rain, half asleep and rather cross, they arrived at the esthetic but respectable colony of Aengusmere by the noon train.
CHAPTER XI. HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE
The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The common room (which is uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes.
Istra had gone up to her room to sleep, bidding Mr. Wrenn do likewise and avoid the wrong bunch at the Caravanserai; for besides the wrong bunch of Interesting People there were, she explained, a right bunch, of working artists. But he wanted to get some new clothes, to replace his rain-wrinkled ready-mades. He was tottering through the common room, wondering whether he could find a clothing-shop in Aengusmere, when a shrill gurgle from a wing-chair by the rough-brick fireplace halted him.
"Oh-h-h-h, Mister Wrenn; Mr. Wrenn!" There sat Mrs. Stettinius, the poet-lady of Olympia's rooms on Great James Street.
"Oh-h-h-h, Mr. Wrenn, you bad man, do come sit down and tell me all about your wonderful trek with Istra Nash. I just met dear Istra in the upper hall. Poor dear, she was so crumpled, but her hair was like a sunset over mountain peaks-you know, as Yeats says:
"A stormy sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships,
only of course this was her hair and not her lips -and she told me that you had tramped all the way from London. I've never heard of anything so romantic-or no, I won't say `romantic'-I do agree with dear Olympia-isn't she a mag_nificent woman-so fearless and progressive-didn't you adore meeting her?-she is our modern Joan of Arc-such a noble figure-I do agree with her that romantic love is passe, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that regards varietism as exactly as romantic as monogamy. But-but-where was I?-I think your gipsying down from London was most exciting. Now do tell us all about it, Mr. Wrenn. First, I want you to meet Miss Saxonby and Mr. Gutch and dear Yilyena Dourschetsky and Mr. Howard Bancock Binch-of course you know his poetry."