The day before had been one of those warm, midsummer days, beginning with a clear sky and a strong south wind. By noon heavy white clouds that looked like heaps of down floated slowly overhead.
[Illustration: The weather vane.]
The weather vane, which in the morning had pointed to the south, turned from side to side, as though uncertain which direction it liked best. Toward afternoon it seemed to settle the question in favor of the east.
The clouds did not rise higher and become thinner and more scattered, as such clouds do if the weather is fair. They kept their white, billowy edges, and rested heavily on straight bands of dull gray.
When the sun set, the scroll—like edges of the clouds were tinged with gold and rose color, but under the glittering fringe remained the solid banks of gray and misty purple.
The thermometer had been high all day, for it was very warm. The barometer had slowly but surely fallen.
Then, too, the Weather Report, just received, told of a storm that had started in the southwestern part of the country and was moving northeast. Uncle Robert had said, at the rate it was traveling, it might reach them some time the next day.
And now it was raining in a quiet, steady way. The clouds had lost their billowy whiteness. They were one dull, heavy, unbroken mass of gray. The wind blew steadily from the southeast.
A rainy day was before them.
"The very thing we need," said Mr. Leonard. "The corn is just ready for it, and the pastures are beginning to look pretty dry."