“But look at the lake, Miss Jean.”
“Just Jean and Molly and Nan, Greta,” said Jean, as she looked out at an angry lake, whipped by a wind. The trees were bending now before a great wind. Whirls of leaves and broken branches began to fly. Then Nan cried, “Here they come,” and ran to open the door for the fleeing girls, who ran through a blinding downpour and against a strong wind.
“It’s a regular whirlwind, and I hear a terrible roaring, girls,” said Grace, out of breath. “Is everything closed tight?”
Nan, Jean and Molly were using their combined strength to shut the door after the dripping girls had come in, but Greta answered. “We shut up everything, Miss French.”
There was nothing to do but to wait results. By this time they all knew that a storm of more than usual intensity was upon them. “‘Sans peur,’ girls,” Grace reminded them, her chin raised and her eyes looking out upon the whirling scene outside. “I’m glad that we reached shelter and are together.”
“I’m scared,” said Phoebe, “and I don’t care who knows it!” She was standing by Leigh Dudley, who had drawn a chair into the middle of the room and had sunk into it as quite exhausted after their mad rush through the woods. Leigh reached up with a smile and drew Phoebe down into her lap. “Sit down Phoebe-bird. It doesn’t do any good to be scared, but I’m not feeling any too safe myself.”
The two girls cuddled together and shut their eyes, but Jean and Greta stood together, looking out, and Greta whispered, “The good God can save us if it is best.” Not in vain had Greta read that German Bible.
Crash went a tree, just hitting the sleeping porch, and the little house shook. But the worst of the storm had passed them by in a few minutes from the time they heard the roaring sound, so rapidly was the work of destruction done. It was wind rather than lightning which had been the greatest menace. Pouring rain continued for some time,—and then the sun came out!
“Now is the time to be thankful, girls,” said Grace, “but I hope that the boys are all right. If I’m not mistaken, some cyclone went by us and we’ll hear of damage done by it.”
Uneasily, the girls went about opening windows, looking out to see what damage had been done to the sleeping porch, or going out into their cleared dooryard to see if their prettiest trees had suffered. Branches lay on the ground, whipped from the trees. It was a small elm that had hit the porch. “Girls, if that tree hadn’t been actually lifted by the wind, I don’t believe it could have reached us,” said Jean. “My father said that they particularly tried to see that no tree could hit us if a storm felled it, no big one, I mean. We have shade enough as it is.”