"Oh, Russ! You can't!" gasped Rose.
"A real automobile like the one that we rode down here in from Pineville?" asked Laddie, opening his eyes very wide.
"Well, no—not just like that," admitted Russ. "But we'll have some fun with it and we won't bother about the thunder."
Rose looked a bit doubtful over that statement. But she knew it was her duty to help the younger children forget their fears. She started down the steep stairs behind Russ. Laddie and Margy came next, while Vi was helping short-legged little Mun Bun to reach the stairway.
And it was just then that the very awful "thunder stroke" came. It seemed to burst right over the roof, and the flash of lightning that came with it almost blinded the children. There was even a smell of sulphur—just like matches. Only it was a bigger smell than any sulphur match could make.
The children's cries were drowned by the crash outside. The lightning had struck a big old tree that overhung the house. The tree trunk was splintered right down from the top, and before the sound of the thunder died away the broken-off part of that tree fell right across the roof.
How the old house shook! Such a ripping and tearing of shingles as there was! Rose could not stifle her shriek. She and Margy and Laddie came tumbling down the rest of the stairs behind Russ.
"Where's Vi and Mun Bun?" demanded the oldest of the six little Bunkers, staring up the dust-filled stairway.
"Oh! Oh! Help me up!" shrieked Vi from the attic.
"Help me!" cried Mun Bun, very much frightened too. "Somebody is holding me down."