The girls scattered, and the next half-hour was spent in making everything ready for stormy weather. Only Louise Johnson, her mouth full of mint gum, gaily protested that it was all nonsense. It might rain, of course, but she didn’t believe there was going to be any heavy storm—in August——
“If the rest of you want to bundle up in your gym. suits you can, but excuse me!” she said. “And I can’t put all my duds under cover.”
“All right, Johnny, you’ll have nobody but yourself to blame if you find your things soaked, or blown into the bay before morning,” Mary Hastings told her. “I’m going to obey orders,” and she hurried over to her own tent.
The evening began merrily in the big dining-room. The canvas sides had been securely fastened down, and a splendid wood fire blazed in the wide fireplace. Tables were piled at one side of the room, and the girls played games, and danced to the music of two violins. At bedtime Mrs. Royall served hot chocolate and wafers, and then the girls went to their tents. By that time the sky was covered with a murk of black clouds, and a penetrating wind was blowing up the bay and whistling through the grove. Extra blankets had been put over the cots and rubber blankets over all, and the girls were quite willing to pull their flannel gym. suits over their night clothes, and found them none too warm. Even Louise Johnson followed the example of the others. “Gee!” she exclaimed as she tucked the extra blanket closely around her shoulders, “camping out isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—not in this weather. Isn’t that thunder?”
It was thunder, and some of the more timid girls heard it with quaking hearts. But it was distant, low growling thunder, and after a little it died away. The girls, under their wool coverings, were warm and comfortable, and their laughter and chatter ceased as they dropped off to sleep.
It seemed as if the storm spirits had maliciously waited that their onset might be the more effective, for when all was quiet, and everybody in camp asleep, the muttering of the thunder grew louder, lightning began to zigzag across the black cloud masses, and the whistling of the wind deepened to a steady ominous growl. Tent ropes creaked under the strain of the heavy blasts; trees writhed and twisted, and the rain came in gusts, swift, spiteful, and icy cold. In the dining-room Mrs. Royall awoke from a light doze and piled fresh logs on the fire. Anne and Laura, whom she had kept with her in case their help might be needed, peered anxiously out of the windows.
“Can’t see a thing but black night except when the flashes come,” Anne said, “but this uproar is bound to awaken the girls.”
“And some of them are sure to be frightened,” added Mrs. Royall.
“It is enough to frighten them—all this tumult,” Laura said. “I wish we could get them all in here.”
“I’d have kept them all here and made a big field bed on the floor if I had thought we were going to have such a storm as this,” Mrs. Royall said anxiously. “If it doesn’t lessen soon, I shall take a lantern and go the round of the tents to see if all is right.”