“And keep on delivering us from the Tishbite, forever and ever, Amen!”
Chapter XVI
What the Storm Did
Next morning nearly everyone in the town was talking about the storm. Belle said what with the booming of the waves against the breakwater and the wind rattling the shutters, she hadn’t slept a wink all night. It seemed as if every gust would surely take the house off its foundations.
Old Jeremy reported that it was one of the worst wind-storms ever known along the Cape, wild enough to blow all the sand dunes into the sea. They’d had the best shaking up and shifting around that they’d had in years, he declared. Captain Ames’ cranberry bog was buried so deep in sand you couldn’t see a blossom or a leaf. And there was sand drifted all over the garden. It had whirled clear over the wall, till the bird pool was half full of it.
Georgina listened languidly, feeling very comfortable and important with her breakfast brought in to her on a tray. Tippy thought it was too chilly for her in the dining-room where there was no fire. Jeremy had kindled a cheerful blaze on the living-room hearth and his tales of damage done to the shipping and to roofs and chimneys about town, seemed to emphasize her own safety and comfort. The only thing which made the storm seem a personal affair was the big limb blown off the willow tree.
Mrs. Triplett and Jeremy could remember a storm years ago which shifted the sand until the whole face of the Cape seemed changed. That was before the Government planted grass all over it, to bind it together with firm roots. Later when the ring of an axe told that the willow limb was being chopped in pieces, Georgina begged to be allowed to go outdoors.
“Let me go out and see the tracks of the storm,” she urged. “I feel all right. I’m all over the gas now.”
But Mrs. Triplett preferred to run no risks. All she said to Georgina was:
“No, after such a close call as you had yesterday you stay right here where I can keep an eye on you, and take it quietly for a day or two,” but when she went into the next room Georgina heard her say to Belle: