The wind was higher than ever now. It blew in squally gusts. Clouds were sagging dark in the southwest. The sun winked in and out like the light of a great pharos.
Sophy found her first mushroom—small, but a beauty. It nestled low in the grass on its plump, naked leg. Its round, white top was faintly browned like a well-cooked meringue. Then she found another, enormous—a real prize, it seemed. But something about it was too perfect—too white. She nipped it out of its green bed, and looked at the gills. They were snowy white. Its slender leg was cased in a fine, white-silk stocking that was "coming down."
"Oh," said Sophy, looking queerly at the too-lovely creature, "how very like you are to some other mistakes of mine!... And yet ... if I ate you ... you would cure them all," she ended quizzically.
She threw the false mushroom away. It lay, pale and corpse-like, in the wet grass. It was so like damp, dead flesh that Sophy shivered.
Now the wind began really to tussle with her. It blew in wild, whoorooshing blasts. The thickets seethed. The old orchard on the hill above made a harsh rattling with its gnarled boughs. She could see the tree-tops on the lawn, bowing, twisting, lashing wildly, as though trying to wrench their roots free from the grip of earth, as though possessed to follow their flying leaves into the sky. Now came a spat of rain. She ducked her head and began to run.
The bull was proceeding with majestic leisureliness towards his shed. He booed from bass to treble, several times. "My sultanas," said this booing, "I advise you to seek, with me, the shelter of my palace."
All the heifers began moving after him towards the shed. Now the rain came in earnest—big, cold drops. Sophy ran faster and faster. The mushrooms in her basket bounced plumply. She was afraid they would be smashed. She took off her brown velvet cap and pressed it over them as she ran. The rain rather blinded her. She ran full-tilt into some one who emerged suddenly from behind a thicket near the pasture-bars.
"By Jove!... You're soaked!..." said a voice she knew. It was Loring.