It fell on tired face, trailing limbs, tossing promiscuously upon the hay.
“What’s—that?” Una sat up suddenly.
“Only the rain. Another shower! Sounds—sounds like bricks upon a tin roof!” Pemrose yawned. “Well! ducky, didn’t we have a good night—what was left of it—in spite of that old ‘Hayseed’ and his slippers?”
“Poor old bear! No wonder he called himself beyond God bless you!” mumbled Dorothy. “Last night—didn’t it put the cream on experiences—camping experiences?”
“I’ll say—so.” Pemrose echoed the boy’s slang, cuddling close to her loft-mate, her dearest joke-fellow, Una, careful, in her tickled laughter, not to wake fifteen slumbering girls stretched like trailing plants around their Guardian—their queen of the meadow, raised slightly above them, upon a mouldy dais of hay.
“Isn’t she a—dear? A dear!” Pemrose gazed at the white feather of hair in the brown of the womanly locks, unbound. “Just the woman—I want to be!” dreamily. “The birds, do you hear them? Pecking on the roof!” She pinched Una. “Aren’t they loud—like scratching monkeys? Mercy! what’s—that? A—rat?”
“A rat! Oh! don’t—don’t let me see it,” wailed Una. “And we were so ‘comfy’!”
“A rat! A hor-rid rat, with—oh! tail by the yard,” screamed Dorothy, hopping round, in the dim light, from basement to bank of last year’s hay.
“A rat! Oh! the only thing—the only thing I’d ever want to kill is a rat.”
Did the sinister wish, a rebounding shell, hit Pemrose Lorry, herself—she careering blindly, too?