Flora stared at her. "Why, why not?" said she.

"I won't."

"I never knew what happiness was until I got married," said Flora.

Then she flushed up suddenly all over her steady face.

Lois, too, started and blushed, as if the other girl's speech had struck some answering chord in her. The two were silent a moment.

Lois sewed; Flora stared off through the trees at the darkening sky.

The low rumble of thunder was incessant.

"George is one of the best husbands that ever a girl had," said Flora, in a tender, shamed voice; "but Francis would make just as good a one."

Lois made no reply. She almost turned her back toward Flora as she sewed.

"I guess you'll change your mind some time about getting married,"

Flora said.

"No, I never will," returned Lois.

"Well, I suppose if you don't, you'll have money enough to take care of yourself with some time, as far as that goes," said Flora. Her voice had a sarcastic ring.

"I shall never have one cent of that Maxwell money," said Lois, with sudden fire. "I'll tell you that much, once for all!" Her eyes fairly gleamed in her delicate, burning face.

"Why, you scare me! What is the matter?" cried Flora.

Lois took a st.i.tch. "Nothing," said she.

"You'd ought to have the money, of course," said Flora, in a bewildered way. "Who else would have it?"

"I don't know," said Lois. "You are the one that ought to have it."

Flora laughed. "Land, I don't want it!" said she. "George earns plenty for us to live on. She's your own aunt, and of course she'll have to leave it to you, if she does act so miserly with it now.

There, I know she's your aunt, Lois, and I don't suppose I ought to speak so, but I can't help it. After all, it don't make much difference, or it needn't, whether you have it or not. I've begun to think money is the very least part of anything in this world, and I want you to be looking out for something else, too, Lois."

"I can't look out for money, or something else, either. You don't know," said Lois, in a pitiful voice.

There came a flash, and then a great crash of thunder. The tempest was about to break.

Flora started up abruptly. "I must run," she shouted through a sudden gust of wind. "Good-by."

Flora sped out of the yard. Her blue dress, lashing around her feet, changed color in the ghastly light of the storm. Some flying leaves struck her in the face. At the gate a cloud of dust from the road nearly blinded her. She realized in a bewildered fashion that there were three women on the other side struggling frantically with the latch.

"Does Mis' Jane Field live here?" inquired one of them, breathlessly.

"No," replied Flora; "that isn't her name."

"She don't?"

"No," gasped Flora, her head lowered before the wind.

"Well, I want to know, ain't this the old Maxwell place?"

"Yes," said Flora.

Some great drops of rain began to fall; there was another flash. The woman struggled mightily, and prevailed over the gate-latch. She pushed it open. "Well, I don't care," said she, "I'm comin' in, whether or no. I dunno but my bonnet-strings will spot, an' I ain't goin' to have my best clothes soaked. It's mighty funny n.o.body knows where Mis' Field lives; but this is the old Maxwell house, where she wrote Mandy she lived, an' I'm goin' in."

Flora stood aside, and the three women entered with a rush. Lois, standing near the door front, saw them coming through the greenish-yellow gloom, their three black figures scudding before the wind like black-sailed ships.

"Land sakes!" shrieked out Mrs. Babc.o.c.k, "there's Lois now! Lois, how are you? I'd like to know what that girl we met at the gate meant telling us they didn't live here. Why, Lois Field, how do you do?

Where's your mother? I guess we'd better step right in, an' not stop to talk. It's an awful tempest. I'm dreadful afraid my bonnet trimmin' will spot."

They all scurried up the steps and into the house. Then the women turned and kissed Lois, and raised a little clamor of delight over her. She stood panting. She did not ask them into the sitting-room.

Her head whirled. It seemed to her that the end of everything had come.

But Mrs. Babc.o.c.k turned toward the sitting-room door. She had pulled off her bonnet, and was wiping it anxiously with her handkerchief.

"This is the way, ain't it?" she said.

Lois followed them in helplessly. The room was dark as night, for the shutters were closed. Mrs. Babc.o.c.k flung one open peremptorily.

"We'll break our necks here, if we don't have some light," she said.

The hail began to rattle on the window-panes.

"It's hailin'!" the women chorussed.

"Are your windows all shut?" Mrs. Babc.o.c.k demanded of Lois.

And the girl said, in a dazed way, that the bedroom windows were open, and then went mechanically to shut them.

"Shut the blinds, too!" screamed Mrs. Babc.o.c.k. "The hail's comin' in this side terrible heavy. I'm afraid it'll break the gla.s.s." Mrs.

Babc.o.c.k herself, her face screwed tightly against an onslaught of wind and hail, shut the blinds, and the room was again plunged in darkness. "We'll have to stan' it," said she. "Mis' Field don't want her windows all broke in. That's dreadful sharp."

Thunder shook the house like an explosion. The women looked at each other with awed faces.

"Where is your mother? Why don't she come in here?" Mrs. Babc.o.c.k asked excitedly of Lois returning from the bedroom.

"She's gone berrying," replied Lois, feebly. She sank into a chair.

"Gone berryin'!" screamed Mrs. Babc.o.c.k, and the other women echoed her.

"Yes'm."

"When did she go?"

"Right after dinner."

"Right after dinner, an' she ain't got home yet! Out in this awful tempest! Well, she'll be killed. You'll never see her again, that's all. A berry pasture is the most dangerous place in creation in a thunder-shower. Out berryin' in all this hail an' thunder an'

lightnin'!"