“It’s going to be a hard blow,” Marmie said, “but you mustn’t be frightened. The house is quite safe, and fortunately the boys have got the stock safely corralled. But they’ve had a job over it. Dad says he’s never had a harder time, and that he thought his horse and he would certainly be blown clean up to the moon before it was done.”
And blow it did all night. The girls kept waking up and hearing the sound of it, and their beds rocked, so that they thought they really might have blown out to sea, after all. Rose even got up to peer out of the window, but there, in the grey light, for the moon was shining through clouds, she saw the red roofs, snuggled under the hill; one of the cottonwood trees however, the biggest of all, lay flat.
When morning came the wind was gone, but torrents of sleety rain were falling.
So there was no going out to play. After lessons and dinner were over and Marmie had gone to see about putting things to rights, Rose and Ruth settled themselves in the living room. Rose was painting with her box of water colours, and Ruth sat looking into the fire, very quiet and rather drowsy, for she hadn’t slept much through the wild night.
Though it was early in the afternoon the room was pretty dark, for the skies were black and grey, and the sleet pushed itself against the windows like a heavy curtain.
“What do you suppose I’m painting?” Rose asked her sister suddenly.
Ruth jumped. She must have been almost asleep.
“Are you going to be an artist when you grow up, Rose? If you are you can make pictures for my stories, because I’m going to be an author, and write wonderful books with fairies and heroines and wild robbers and splendid knights in them.”
“Yes, but what d’you think I’m painting now?” insisted Rose.
“A ship with the Flying Dutchman on it?”