“And a black cloud is a beast of a thing when it bursts,” added Rosa, pointing to the menace in the distance, above the balloon-like foliage of the immemorial elms.
Priscilla shook her head.
“We’ll do it,” she cried; “yes, if we hurry. I don’t want to get this frock wet, so we’ll rush for the primroses and shelter at the house. It will be an April shower, but we’ll dodge it.”
“No fear,” acquiesced Rosa.
Down they plunged among the trees of the long slope, at the bottom of which the trout stream curled among the mossy stones, spreading its delicate white floss over some, and threading the narrows with a cord of silk, and then spattering the ferns on each side of a rock that met its advance too abruptly.
In a few minutes the girls were among the primroses. They were like the yellow pattern upon a green carpet at this place, only one could not see the carpet for the pattern. When the two serviceable baskets were packed with primroses there did not seem to be a clump the less in this garden that appeared to be the very throne of Spring itself—the throne and the golden treasury of the millionaire Spring.
And all the time that they were filling their baskets the blackbirds were making music among the bracken on the opposite slope, and once a great thrush came down with a wild winnowing of wings to a bramble that swung above the ripples of the water. It sounded its cackling note of alarm, and before it had ceased a cuckoo was heard as it flew from among a clump of chestnuts, gorgeous in drapery, to where a solitary ash, not yet green, stood far away from the billowy foliage of the slope.
And then the sunlit land became aware of a shadow sweeping up the valley. The rumble of thunder came from the distance.
“We’re in for it!” cried Rosa, springing up from the carpet where she had been kneeling.
“We’ll be in for it, as fast as we make ourselves—in the porch at least,” shouted Priscilla, catching up her basket and making a run for the zig-zag track up the bank. She was followed by Rosa with all speed, but before they got to the carriage drive at the top the first drops were making kettledrums of the crowns of their straw hats, and once again the organ of the orchestra was beginning to peal.