Jack's Two Sovereigns

by A. S. Fenn

And even when her husband should come home, it might be some time before he was able to supply her with money, for lately he had had but little to do.

The potatoes were cooking; the mutton was beginning to sputter in the oven, and to smell very good, when the storm that had been threatening all the morning came on with violence. The claps of thunder grew nearer and louder, the lightning flashed in at all the windows, and after each flash Jem counted—“One—two—three”—to see how many miles away the storm actually was. But soon the thunder followed so quickly that there was no time to count at all—it was evidently just overhead.

Then the rain came down in torrents, and Mrs. Kayll looked anxiously out, and hoped those poor children were in shelter, for the church-goers had not yet come home, although it was past the usual time for their return.

Madge looked in the oven to see that the meat was not cooking too fast, and then she and the boys ran upstairs to look from a bed-room window, and watch how the fierce rain pelted down on the dry road and beat up again in spray. They could not see this from the lower windows, as theirs being such an old house, and the road having been much raised since it was built, it stood quite in a hole, and there were four steps to go down from the gate to the door. The dwellings on each side were also lower than the roadway, but the Kaylls’ was the lowest of all.

How it rained! Faster and faster! Jem fancied this was how the heavy drops must have poured from the skies when the great flood was, and nearly all the world was drowned. He watched the little rivulets that ran down the hill at the foot of which they lived, noticed the stream by the side of the path growing wider and wider, and saw that the gratings above the drains were getting choked up with rubbish, so that, from letting the water run through too slowly, they came to not letting it run through at all.

“Oh, those children!” sighed Mrs. Kayll, looking anxiously up the hill. “I am afraid they will be soaked to the skin. Not in sight yet! Where can they be?”

And then she went down-stairs with Madge, leaving baby in Bob’s charge. Bob held him up where he too could see what was going on outside—the heavy rain still falling, the water beginning to stand in the road, in a pool that spread and spread—the passers-by, hastening home under dripping umbrellas, those who wanted to cross the road having to go far enough round, or else plucking up sufficient courage to wade through, ankle-deep, as though satisfied that they were already so wet that a little more or less could not make much difference.

Still heavily as before the rain fell, and the little streams flowed ever faster down the street. Jem was still thinking of the flood and staring out, when Mrs. Kayll’s voice called from below:

“Bob, come and help me here a minute. It’s beginning to come in at the front door.”

Bob ran down, but no help of his could stop the water out, for it was now fast pouring over from the pavement down the four steps and into the little area. Madge looked on, as it trickled and spread along the passage.