Still running, she wept and she prayed. She ceased her flight only when she came to the spot where her tiny shoes and socks lay beside those of Bobby’s. Then she sat down and gave loose to her grief. When the first fierce desolation and agony had passed, she put on her shoes and began to think.
Suddenly her drawn face relaxed. Her mother! Had she not always brought her griefs to that tender, loving soul? She would seek her at once and tell all. She glanced at her watch. Forty-five minutes had passed! She had exceeded her time by a quarter of an hour. It was nearly train time. There was not a second to be lost.
As she rose to her feet something unusual had occurred. The ground beneath her seemed to be swinging up and down.
Peggy was a native. In normal circumstances she would have been normally excited; but in her present condition she hardly noticed that she was in the throes of an earthquake.
So calmly ignoring the shouts of men and the hysteria of women who came running out in hundreds from house and hotel, Peggy went forward at a smart trot to bring the awful tidings to Mrs. Sansone, her mother.
CHAPTER II
TENDING TO SHOW THAT MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY
To natives of Los Angeles, or to those who have spent some years in that beautiful city—so beautiful that one could easily vision Adam and Eve as its occupants before the Fall—an earthquake tremor is just something more than of passing interest. They remain “unusual calm” when the house shakes, the pictures flap upon the wall, and the crockery rattles in noisy unrest. They regard their earthquakes as tamed creatures—not more formidable, practically speaking, than “a thing of noise and fury, signifying nothing.” When visitors show agitation at the coming of an earth tremor, these old inhabitants—and five years’ residence in Los Angeles makes one something little short of a patriarch—are almost scandalized. Should these strangers go the way that leads to hysteria, the old inhabitants grow properly indignant, and point out that all the tremors in the history of Los Angeles County are as nothing, in point of damage, as compared to one solitary cyclone of the Middle West. No doubt they are right.
However, to a stranger these pranks of mother earth are fraught with terror. Many men and women are not only frightened, but actually become sick. Dizziness and nausea are not uncommon, although the cause be only a slight tremor of but three or four seconds’ duration.
Among those affected on this day, so momentous in her life and that of her only child, was Mrs. Barbara Vernon. When the shock came she was resting on the sands under the shade of one of those gigantic umbrellas rented out at the beaches as a protection from the ardent rays of the sun. Beside her sat Mrs. Sansone, Peggy’s mother.
“Oh, my God!” cried Mrs. Vernon, jumping to her feet and clasping her hands. She would have run straight into the ocean had not Mrs. Sansone laid upon her a restraining hand.