“Oh! come,” said the Guardian; “don’t think of such things.” She, forthwith, pinned a smile upon her lips, which the lightning, as promptly, unpinned.
“I—I can fancy them all crowding together against the fence,” droned Pemrose again, “and nickering nervously—even Cartoon. And the little, trembling foals hiding under their mothers! I wonder whether a mother-horse would desert its baby?”
“In danger, I hardly think so—although I don’t know that it has ever been tested,” said the Guardian. “Ha! Now for the rain! The deluge! I doubt whether our Ark will ride that, as it did the lightning.”
The black rain clouds drifting through the lightning-ripped dusk, like soot through smoke, floated higher than the thundershutters.
Presently, girls were shrinking into themselves, trying to dwindle to the sheltering capacity of their sweaters, cowering in corners, the Guardian attempting to shield her brood, as fingers of rain came seeking them out, curdling courage.
They had escaped peril of fire bolt and fork-lightning which, to-night, had killed many a noble tree. The thunder storm was now abating.
But to spend the night here, unprovided—on the sodden floor of an open camp! Or to attempt the descent of a washed-out trail through those blindly dripping forests!
Well! it was the first time that the Guardian wished herself back at her teacher’s desk—in the stuffiest schoolroom imaginable—wished that she had not undertaken the charge of eighteen girls through these summer months.
It was the first time that the girls, themselves, felt flinching—breaking—before the “fiery stick” of reality with which Andrew had threatened them—of deadly hardship.
“And there may be a washout below us on the mountain, between here and camp,” said the Guardian feebly, “an impassable washout. We’d better wait for a while, anyway, before attempting the trail.”