John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared grin.
“Oh, ain’t this awful, Miss Cuthbert? Mr. Harrison sent me over to see if yous had come out all right.”
“We’re none of us killed,” said Marilla grimly, “and none of the buildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well.”
“Yas’m. Not quite so well, ma’am. We was struck. The lightning knocked over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over Ginger’s cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar. Yas’m.”
“Was Ginger hurt?” queried Anne.
“Yas’m. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed.” Later on Anne went over to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, stroking Ginger’s gay dead body with a trembling hand.
“Poor Ginger won’t call you any more names, Anne,” he said mournfully.
Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger’s account, but the tears came into her eyes.
“He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he’s dead. Well, well, I’m an old fool to care so much. I’ll let on I don’t care. I know you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . . . but don’t. If you did I’d cry like a baby. Hasn’t this been a terrible storm? I guess folks won’t laugh at Uncle Abe’s predictions again. Seems as if all the storms that he’s been prophesying all his life that never happened came all at once. Beats all how he struck the very day though, don’t it? Look at the mess we have here. I must hustle round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the floor.”
Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late with ill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck, people killed and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had been disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields had perished.