For Jacqueline at that hour, there were no dreams. All the first part of the night she had slept soundly. She was really tired, for she had worked hard all day, in an honest effort to make up for the naughtiness of the day before, and to show that she appreciated the way in which no one, not even Neil, alluded to it. (Neil had actually come forward, and offered to help wash the dinner dishes!)
But when the first crash of thunder reverberated from the eastern mountains to the hills across the river, Jacqueline sat right up in bed. Where was she? What was happening? A white blaze lit the topsy-turvy baskets of roses on the wall-paper, so that she clapped her hands to her eyes and thought she was blind for life. Then she felt the clutch of frightened little arms flung round her, and heard Nellie sob:
“Oh, Jackie! I’m so scared!”
“Thunder can’t hurt you, goosey!” quavered Jacqueline, with her arm pressed tight across her eyes. The roof would fall upon their heads next moment, she was sure. The whole house would go up in a blaze of fire. Oh, why didn’t Aunt Martha come to rescue them?
But Aunt Martha didn’t come. Nobody came! The thunder shook the roof beams. The lightning sheathed the room in molten flame. Nellie sobbed, and choked, and clung round Jacqueline’s neck.
“Mammy! Mammy!” she gasped.
“Keep still!” Jacqueline scolded. “Your mother isn’t coming—nobody’s coming—and I’ve got to get up and shut those windows.”
Yes, that was just what she must do. For the rain, driven by the wind, was drenching their bed, and doing nobody knew what damage besides. She must get up—and she did get up! It wouldn’t do ever to let Nellie think that ten years old could be as scared as six years old.
Jacqueline struggled with the windows that stuck, while the rain soaked through her thin nightdress, clear to her skin, and the thunder boomed in her ears, and the lightning seemed aimed in all the universe at her one poor little head. She remembered every dreary story she had ever heard of people killed by lightning. She thought she was killed, half a dozen times at least. But she closed the windows and yanked down the blinds, to shut out the glare. Then she made one flying leap into the bed and clutched Nellie as tight as Nellie clutched her, and vowed to herself that nothing—nothing in the wide world!—should tear her from the protection of that bed, until the storm was over.
Just as she made that vow, there came from Aunt Martha’s room a thin, high-pitched wail that made both little girls catch their breath.