With a wild shriek Miss Georgina sprang to her feet.
She was the most abject coward in a thunderstorm.
Miss Jackson endeavoured to calm her.
‘Oh, Carry, let me go—let me go,’ she cried; ‘lead me to the coal-cellar.’
The company endeavoured to soothe her fears. It wasn’t forked lightning, they assured her. There was no danger.
‘Cover the glasses over, Jabez,’ moaned Georgina, ‘and open the windows, and set the doors ajar, and see there are no knives about. Oh!’ Another terrific peal of thunder wrung this last interjection from Miss Duck. She darted out of the room in a state of collapse, and, seizing a chair, rushed into the coal-cellar with it, and there awaited the abatement of the storm.
Jabez explained that his sister was very frightened of lightning, and he hoped the company would excuse her. She always shut herself in the coal-cellar during a thunderstorm.
‘Poor thing!’ sighed Miss Jackson. ‘Spending her birthday in the coal-cellar! Oh, my poor friend!’
Miss Jackson, imagining that a tear ought to be trickling down her nose, was about to produce her handkerchief and wipe it away, when her brother created a diversion which cast the cruel situation of Miss Duck into temporary oblivion.
The windows had been flung open to let a current of air through the room and give the lightning egress, and Miss Jackson’s brother was surveying the heavens and mentally composing an ode to Jupiter, when his attention was attracted by a figure on the opposite side of the road.