Mrs. Warlow and the colonel had now descended to the "lower regions," as Clifford termed the first story of the dwelling, where he and Rob were removing a mountain of mud from the floor, and their mother soon prepared a breakfast which those hungry youths pronounced a royal banquet.
But Maud still carried on her loud flirtation from the tree-top in tones which, Rob said, "could be heard in the next county," and the way she managed, with her lengthened description of their experience, to detain Ralph until all danger of high water on his return had passed, showed she felt a greater interest in the rider than in the high-toned subject.
After he had at length ridden away, Maud descended to the rooms below, where her mother was, saying that "this inundation would be long remembered, and would become legendary and traditional."
"Yes," replied Clifford, gravely, "Rob and I will carry the memory of the event down to our 'remotest ancestors.'"
"Oh, I daresay it will lose nothing in the way of variations in the transmission," said Maud; "but here, you superior being, bring me a pail of water;" and Clifford marched off obediently to the muddy well.
"Why, madam," cried Rob, mockingly, as he scraped the mud from the floor, "have you regained your voice? I was afraid it was utterly lost;" and he giggled at the thought of how her tones had wandered away over the prairie.
"More scrubbing and less sarcasm, young man!" she replied, with a blush, as she vigorously attacked the wall, which was stained by the water, or frescoed with mud and slime; but as the plastering was of hard coat, it soon regained its wonted purity under the drenching which was administered by the energetic and busy workers, and long before night-fall the usual neatness and order reigned in the Warlow household.
The young brood of grasshoppers had all been swept away in the flood, or perished in the long, cold storm. Pious Mrs. Warlow said, "The hand of the Lord is revealed in freeing the land of those pests;" and indeed it appeared the work of Providence, which had so effectually destroyed them that no further trace was visible of the scourge which only a brief day before had threatened both the Missouri and Arkansas valleys with famine and desolation.
The weather, that for the past year had played the fickle jade, now tried to atone for her folly, and often would she burst into tears of remorse, and veil her face in summer clouds, at remembrance of the wild tantrums which had marred her equinoctial history.
In the propitious rain and sunshine which followed, the fields of grain emerged from their coat of rich sediment, and the lush, dank growth of the cereals ripened into great level fields of waving grain, the bronze and golden wheat and silvery sheen of barley and oats contrasting happily with the long rows of corn and emerald millet.