Adelaide and her father were full of jokes together, so quick and bright that Kate listened instead of talking. She had almost lost the habit of merry chatter, and it did not come to her quickly again; but she was greatly entertained; and thus they came to the station, where Lady de la Poer and her other three girls were awaiting them, and greeted Kate with joyful faces.
They were the more relieved at the arrival of the three, because the station was close and heated, and it was a very warm summer day, so that the air was extremely oppressive.
“It feels like thunder,” said some one. And thenceforth Kate’s perfect felicity was clouded. She had a great dislike to a thunder-storm, and she instantly began asking her neighbours if they really thought it would be thunder.
“I hope it will,” said Lady Fanny; “it would cool the air, and sound so grand in those domes.”
Kate thought this savage, and with an imploring look asked Lady de la Poer if she thought there would be a storm.
“I can’t see the least sign of one,” was the answer. “See how clear the sky is!” as they steamed out of the station.
“But do you think there will be one to-day?” demanded Kate.
“I do not expect it,” said Lady de la Poer, smiling; “and there is no use in expecting disagreeables.”
“Disagreeables! O Mamma, it would be such fun,” cried Grace, “if we only had a chance of getting wet through!”
Here Lord de la Poer adroitly called off the public attention from the perils of the clouds, by declaring that he wanted to make out the fourth line of an advertisement on the banks, of which he said he had made out one line as he was whisked by on each journey he had made; and as it was four times over in four different languages, he required each damsel to undertake one; and there was a great deal of laughing over which it should be that should undertake each language. Fanny and Mary were humble, and sure they could never catch the German; and Kate, more enterprising, undertook the Italian. After all, while they were chattering about it, they went past the valuable document, and were come in sight of the “monsters” in the Gardens; and Lord de la Poer asked Kate if she would like to catch a pretty little frog; to which Mary responded, “Oh, what a tadpole it must have been!” and the discovery that her friends had once kept a preserve of tadpoles to watch them turn into frogs, was so delightful as entirely to dissipate all remaining thoughts of thunder, and leave Kate free for almost breathless amazement at the glittering domes of glass, looking like enormous bubbles in the sun.