"That'd be informin', said Mick.
"Almighty God's sure to pay him out when he dies," Honeybird said.
"I'd rather pay him out now," said Jane. At that moment there was a flash of lightning, and a crash of thunder overhead, and then a shower of hailstones rattled against the window.
"Mebby he'll be struck dead," said Fly; "Almighty God's sure to be awful mad with him."
For three hours the rain poured in torrents. The children watched it from the schoolroom window splashing up on the path, and beating down the fuchsia bushes in the border.
But by dinner-time it had cleared up, and the sky looked clean and blue, as though it had just been washed. When dinner was over they set off to the village, expecting to hear that Jimmie had been struck by lightning, or, as Fly thought would be more proper, killed by a thunderbolt.
Mrs M'Rea was standing at her door, with a ring of neighbours round her. As they came up the street they heard her say: "There's the childer, an' they were the kin' friends to her when she was alive."
"Good-mornin', Mrs M'Rea," said Jane; "has Jimmie been kilt?"
"Is it kilt," said Mrs M'Rea; "'deed an' it's no more than he desarves—but we don't all get what we desarve in this world, glory be to God! Troth, no; it's marriet he is, an' comin' home the night in style on a ker, all the way from Ballynahinch."
"We thought Almighty God'd 'a' kilt him with a thunderbolt," said Fly.