LITMIR.BIZ

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had been unbearably hot and close all day long.

      The brazen, hard-blue sky had seemed to be pressing a blanket of thick, humid air closer and closer to the earth as if bent upon the suffocation of everything living. Everybody at the Farm had been sure it was brewing a storm. They had hoped a good rainstorm; and now. … It was almost come.

      Down on the horizon the clouds were piling up in great black and dark grey masses, with here and there a lighter grey that showed ominously against its darker background; cloud masses shot through every now and then with an angry-looking red or orange flash that was immediately answered by a low rumble of ever nearing thunder.

      The wind had risen, after this gasping day without a breath of air stirring anywhere, and now it blew refreshingly cold and clear almost directly from the north.

      It flattened the long parched grass in the yard. It danced the leaves on the trees about so gayly and so madly as they turned their more prominently veined sides to view (which Arethusa knew was almost a sure indication of rain), it did not seem possible their slender stems could hold them to the bending and twisting branches. Indeed, some of them could not hold on and the wind gathered these up and carried them along with bits of twigs and grass to pile up in the fence corners and wait for that sorely needed drink of water there. A garden chair in front of the house rocked violently as though some restless ghost were occupying it and then overturned with a crash. The dust gathered up in the brown dirt road in great swirls and whirled away like miniature cyclone-clouds in their funnel shape towards the Pike to meet other swirls of a lighter dust and go whirling still farther away, until the wind grew tired of such sport and dropped them. The birds' nest in the north cornice which Miss Eliza had been after for weeks blew down, and the straw and bits of feathers were scattered all over the yard; but only to be caught again by the wind and carried on somewhere else. The green shutters on the house swung out on their fastenings as far as they could and then banged back against the house with a tiny crash of sound.

      There seemed nothing that the wind overlooked. Even the clouds, as they piled higher and higher and blacker and blacker, had the appearance of being driven by the wind, nearer and nearer the Farm.

      Arethusa ran out of the front door and down the long, flagged walk towards the quince bushes, far at the very end of the yard, to meet the storm. She held out her arms to the wind and drank in great deep breaths of its refreshing coolness. It tossed her skirts about her and blew the great rope of coppery red hair which ordinarily hung loosely plaited down her back so that it streamed straight out behind her just like a candle flame.

      Of all the things that happened with which she was acquainted, Arethusa loved best a thunder-storm. She felt no slightest tinge of fear; to be out of doors in the wind and rain with thunder crashing and rolling and great flashes of lightning splitting wide the heavens, every now and then, left nothing to be desired towards the perfection of the situation. She had sometimes fancied, after an unusually wide and vivid flash, that she had really been able to see a wee bit of a way into that Heavenly City which she had been taught was high above her, behind all that sky, in the blinding brightness.

      But Arethusa's aunts had altogether different ideas, not one of them (save perhaps Miss Asenath, somewhat) understanding in the least this strange and illogical desire to watch the play of the elements out of doors when she could be safe inside a house. It was always their very first move, when a storm was threatened, to bid her remain indoors.

      To-day though, so far, the gods had seemed to be with her; she had escaped without being seen. And if her luck continued to hold, she might get clear away to Miss Asenath's Woods before her Aunt 'Liza caught her and haled her back. For they had not had such a glorious storm as this would be, if its promise were made good, for months and months.

      There was a flash of lightning that seemed to play all about the girl running swiftly down the walk; a crash of thunder that seemed to make every window pane in the house rattle in echo, and a few, big, splashing drops of rain fell.

      Arethusa stretched her arms high and stood on tiptoe to meet them. She shook her hair loose from its plait and threw back her head, loving it all—the wind and the dark sky and the tense feeling of readiness for the storm with which everything seemed charged—with an almost pagan joy. She even began a dance, a fantastic sort of lonely quadrille (if it could be given any special name), there on the flagged walk by the end of the house.

      "'Thusa!"

      The call came very faint and far away.

      Then—"'Thusa!"

      Louder this time, and much nearer, but Arethusa heeded it not if she heard; her dance continued uninterrupted. She swayed like a tall lily to the wind, with a few little steps one way and then a few little steps the other; holding out her cotton skirts; her hair blown all about her like a great, red cloud. There was something elfin, something wild and woodsy, in her manner of dancing; the nymph whose name she bore might so have welcomed a storm in her woods of ancient Greece.

      Then—"A——r—e-thusa!"

      And Miss Eliza Redfield's own energetic little person, as trig and trim as a tiny ship with all sails closely reefed, even in this boisterous wind, bore down upon her niece. Miss Eliza's grey crown of glory, parted in the middle with precision and to the exactitude of a hair, was totally unruffled and remained drawn down across her forehead in smooth, satiny bands of an evenness and rigidity which no other hair, save Miss Eliza's, could possibly have.

      She pushed her shiny glasses to the end of her sharp, little nose and over them surveyed the disheveled maiden before her.

      "What are you doing?" she asked crisply.

      Arethusa turned her glowing face to her aunt, but without pausing in her dance. "Oh, this glorious storm, Aunt 'Liza! I. … "

      Miss Eliza waved her hand. "You need not answer. I can see quite plainly, for myself, it is something foolish. You should not be out here. Come on into the house, Arethusa. Your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath wish to talk to you. In the sitting-room."

      "Oh, not right now, Aunt 'Liza, please! Can't I. … "

      "No, you can't. Come on into the house. How many times do you have to be told a thing, Arethusa? You know very well how much your Aunt 'Titia objects to your running around in a storm in this outlandish way!"

      "Oh, but Aunt 'Liza, it's not storming yet. Just thundering a little," pleaded Arethusa. "Please let me stay out until it really begins. Please! I'll come right in then. I promise. Please!"

      "Arethusa!"

      And this effectually nipped in the bud Arethusa's faint little effort to have her own way.

      But it would have been nipped effectually sooner or later, for no one ever dreamed of standing up for long against Miss Eliza, or of being so rash as to contemplate such as actual disobedience. Although her stature was that of a child and her figure slight in proportion, she concentrated as much energy and leadership in those four feet eleven inches, as if the figures had been reversed.

      Blish, the negro boy who did all the hardest and heaviest work around the house, inside and out, and who stood six feet three in his stockings, hung his head abjectly as before an offended Goliath when his diminutive mistress scolded him for a task she considered slightingly performed. Blish had an honest and ingrained terror of Miss Eliza's wrath and the lashings she could give with her tongue: and he was not alone among those on the Farm in this terror.

      So Arethusa abandoned her dance and, with her hair still hanging, meekly followed Miss Eliza towards the front door.

      "We have had a letter from your father," began Miss Eliza, as this strange Indian-file procession of very tiny old lady and very tall young girl proceeded back along the flagged walk on which it had issued forth in distinct sections such a short while before.

      "Oh!" Arethusa lunged forward and grabbed Miss Eliza around her neck. "When, Aunt 'Liza? When? This morning? What did he say? Why didn't you tell me? Did he say anything for me? Oh, Aunt 'Liza, what did he say?"

      These staccato questions were poured forth

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