“It looks a little like it,” Polly answered in cheerful tone. “If we have one I will tell you a story.”
“Oh, dear!” Jozy gave a half-laugh. “I don’t know what to do now. I want the story—but I don’t want it to lighten.”
“Probably the storm won’t last long,” was the reply. “They are not apt to up here. Maybe it won’t come at all.”
Polly went on, into the kitchen, where Benedicta’s fruit-filled jars stood in a prim row on the table. Always thereafter, the terrible storm was associated in her memory with that long line of canned blueberries.
Passing out to the piazza, a troubled look came over her face. Instinctively she wished that Dr. Abbe was there. A man is always so convenient if anything happens. Polly had never seen so gruesome a sky. Blackness was gathering overhead, dense blackness that seemed to be embracing the mountain, while far in the northwest zigzags of lightning against a dull coppery sky were appalling in number and incessancy.
She ran across and shut the doors of the garage and then returned to the piazza.
The wind veered to the north and darkness suddenly enveloped the house. A gust slammed the door behind her, and Polly hurried inside and began to shut doors and windows ahead of the oncoming storm. Sheets of rain dashed into her face as she darted here and there. Before she had finished her task a terrific clap halted her in the middle of the children’s dormitory, just as the White Nurse came from the front veranda with Dolly in her arms.
“Isn’t it awful!” cried Mrs. Daybill. And laying the child on a bed, she started back to the veranda door.
A deafening, splitting crash brought an outcry from the children, and Benedicta dashed into the kitchen, a boy in her arms, both streaming with water.
“Where’s that—fire put-outer?” she gasped. “Quick! Study’s struck! All afire! Two boys more there!”