“Is she struck? Will she be blind?” sobbed Adelaide, still with her hands before her eyes; and the inquiry was echoed by the nearer people, while more distant ones told each other that the young lady was blind for life.
“Struck! nonsense!” said Lord de la Poer; “the lightning was twenty miles off at least. Are you hurt, my dear?”
“No,” said Kate, shaking herself, and answering “No,” more decidedly. “Only I am so wet, and my things stick to me.”
“How did it happen?” asked Grace.
“I don’t know. I wanted to get away from the thunder!” said bewildered Kate.
Meantime, an elderly lady, who had come up among the spectators, was telling Lady de la Poer that she lived close by, and insisting that the little girl should be taken at once to her house, put to bed, and her clothes dried. Lady de la Poer was thankful to accept the kind offer without loss of time; and in the fewest possible words it was settled that she would go and attend to the little drowned rat, while her girls should remain with their father at the palace till the time of going home, when they would meet at the station. They must walk to the good lady’s house, be the storm what it would, as the best chance of preventing Kate from catching cold. She looked a rueful spectacle, dripping so as to make a little pool on the stone floor; her hat and feather limp and streaming; her hair in long lank rats’ tails, each discharging its own waterfall; her clothes, ribbons, and all, pasted down upon her! There was no time to be lost; and the stranger took her by one hand, Lady de la Poer by the other, and exchanging some civil speeches with one another half out of breath, they almost swung her from one step of the grand stone stairs to another, and hurried her along as fast as these beplastered garments would let her move. There was no rain as yet, but there was another clap of thunder much louder than the first; but they held Kate too fast to let her stop, or otherwise make herself more foolish.
In a very few minutes they were at the good lady’s door; in another minute in her bedroom, where, while she and her maid bustled off to warm the bed, Lady de la Poer tried to get the clothes off—a service of difficulty, when every tie held fast, every button was slippery, and the tighter garments fitted like skins. Kate was subdued and frightened; she gave no trouble, but all the help she gave was to pull a string so as to make a hopeless knot of the bow that her friend had nearly undone.
However, by the time the bed was warm the dress was off, and the child, rolled up in a great loose night-dress of the kind lady’s, was installed in it, feeling—sultry day though it were—that the warm dryness was extremely comfortable to her chilled limbs. The good lady brought her some hot tea, and moved away to the window, talking in a low murmuring voice to Lady de la Poer. Presently a fresh flash of lightning made her bury her head in the pillow; and there she began thinking how hard it was that the thunder should come to spoil her one day’s pleasure; but soon stopped this, remembering Who sends storm and thunder, and feeling afraid to murmur. Then she remembered that perhaps she deserved to be disappointed. She had been wild and troublesome, had spoilt Adelaide’s birthday, teazed Mary, and made kind Lady de la Poer grave and displeased.
She would say how sorry she was, and ask pardon. But the two ladies still stood talking. She must wait till this stranger was gone. And while she was waiting—how it was she knew not—but Countess Kate was fast asleep.