"It shall be as thee wishes, Asenath," he said; "we had best forget
him."
Of their friends, however, she could not expect this reserve, and she
was doomed to hear stories of Richard which clouded and embittered her
thoughts of him. And a still severer trial was in store. She
accompanied her father, in obedience to his wish, and against her own
desire, to the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. It has passed into a
proverb, that the Friends, on these occasions, always bring rain with
them; and the period of her visit was no exception to the rule. The
showery days of "Yearly-Meeting Week" glided by, until the last, and
she looked forward with relief to the morrow's return to Bucks County,
glad to have escaped a meeting with Richard Hilton, which might have
confirmed her fears, and could but have given her pain in any case.
As she and her father joined each other, outside the meeting-house, at
the close of the afternoon meeting, a light rain was falling. She took
his arm, under the capacious umbrella, and they were soon alone in the
wet streets, on their way to the house of the Friends who entertained
them. At a crossing, where the water, pouring down the gutter towards
the Delaware, caused them to halt, a man, plashing through the flood,
staggered towards them.
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