“I don’t think so,” said Lucius; and he waved his host’s silent offer of a cigar. “No, thanks. Never want to smoke in a thunder-storm. I—Whoo!” he interrupted himself, as a flare of light and a catastrophe of sound came simultaneously. “Let’s go in,” he said mildly.
“Not I. I love to watch it.”
“Well——” Lucius paused, but at a renewal of the catastrophe, “Excuse me!” he said, and tarried no longer.
He found Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum in the centre of the darkened drawing-room. She was sitting in a gilt chair with her feet off the floor and upon a rung of the chair; and four heavy, flat-bottomed drinking-glasses were upon the floor, each of them containing the foot of a leg of the gilt chair. Ludlum was upon her lap.
“Don’t you believe in insulation, Lucius?” she asked anxiously. “As long as we sit like this, we can’t be struck, can we?”
He put on his glasses and gave her a solemn stare before replying. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Of course John is safer out on the porch than we are in here.”
“Oh, no, no!” she cried. “A porch is the most dangerous place there is!”
“I don’t know whether or not he’s safe from the lightning,” Lucius explained. “I mean he’s safe from being troubled about it the way we are.”
“I don’t call that being safe,” his lady-cousin began. “I don’t see what——”
But she broke off to find place for a subdued shriek, as an admiral’s salute of great guns jarred the house. Other salutes followed, interjected, in spite of drawn shades and curtains, with spurts of light into the room, and at each spurt Mrs. Thomas shivered and said “Oh!” in a low voice, whereupon Ludlum jumped and said “Ouch!” likewise in a low voice. Then, at the ensuing crash, Mrs. Thomas emitted a little scream, and Ludlum emitted a large one.