The half of the two-leaved door of the vestibule which had been open was heavy; but Bobby’s companion proved to be a strong and rugged girl, and together they managed to close it. Then, with the rain and wind shut out, although the roar of the elements was still loud in their ears, the two girls were able to examine each other.
And instantly Bobby Hargrew forgot all about the thunder, and lightning, and rain. She stared at the girl cowering in the corner, who winced every time the lightning played across the sky, and closed her eyes with her palms to the reverberation of the thunder.
The girl was perhaps a couple of years older Bobby herself. She was dark and had a tangle of black hair which was dressed indifferently. A woolen cap was drawn down almost to her ears. She was rather scrubbily dressed, and nothing that she wore looked very clean or very new. The waist she had on was cut low at the neck—so low that the girl had tied loosely around her throat a soft, yellow muffler.
Although the old brown cloak she wore hid her green skirt, Bobby knew that the girl before her was the one she and her friends had seen escaping from the Gypsy camp nearly a fortnight before. The girl who had been unafraid of pursuit by the bloodhound, and had run upon stone fences and waded in an ice-cold mountain brook to hide her trail, now cowered in the vestibule of the schoolhouse, in a nervous tremor because of the thunderstorm.
“My! but you are scared of lightning, aren’t you?” exclaimed Bobby, after a minute, and when the noise of the elements had somewhat ceased.
“I—I always am,” gasped the girl.
“The lightning won’t hurt you—at least, the lightning you see will never hurt you, my father says,” added Bobby. “The danger is all past by the time you see the flash of it.”
“But I can’t help being frightened,” replied the girl.
“No. I suppose not. And I guess you are brave enough about other things to make up, eh?”
The girl looked up at her, but was evidently puzzled. She glanced through the glass doors of the building into the corridor.