“Sure thing,” Adrian told him, and then almost immediately he went on to say in a different tone of voice, that had a vein of new anxiety in it, Billie thought: “I wonder why Donald is rubbering so much for toward the southwest. Perhaps he feels the hot breeze that’s beginning to blow from there. I hope it doesn’t mean we’re going to have a sand storm.”
Billie pricked up his ears, so to speak; that is, he showed considerable interest, and himself turned to watch Donald.
“He does look like he had got on the track of something out of the usual run, for a fact,” he muttered, uneasily.
Then he sneezed several times in quick succession, at which Adrian looked as if even this simple event had its significance.
“Beginning to be dust in the air, and I always sneeze when it tickles my nose,” Billie started to say, as if in apology for his explosion.
“Yes, the breeze is picking up, and already the air is starting to get full of the fine sand,” Adrian told him.
“Does that mean we’re bound to run up against
a real sand storm?” Billie wanted to know at once, scenting trouble.
“Donald’s coming this way, and we’ll soon hear what he thinks,” was all Adrian would say.
“Looks to me as if we’re going to get caught out here in a lovely mess,” Donald told them, as he came up.