"I don't see anything to laugh about," protested Grace, still breathless with apprehension.
"Neither do I," admitted Betty, adding whimsically. "But I had either to laugh or cry, so I decided to laugh. After all, you must admit, it was a wonderful skid."
"The best of its kind," admitted Grace dryly. "But please don't try it again, Honey, it has a wearing effect on my nerves!"
They were silent for a while after that, while Betty regarded the increasingly muddy road ahead of her with anxious eyes. She had been forced to slacken her speed more and more until now they were barely crawling along.
"I'm afraid we're in an awfully tight fix," she said at last. "We're just plowing through this mud, and if it's hard on us, what must it be for Mollie, whose car is twice as heavy as this. Look behind, will you, Gracie, and see how she's coming along?"
"She is just coming, and that's all," reported Grace, after a prolonged scrutiny through the rain-glazed window. "Goodness, we've been out in storms before, but I never saw anything like this. And listen to that thunder—o-oh!"
A terrific clap of thunder caused Grace to clap her hands over her ears with a little moan, while even steady-nerved Betty jumped in her seat and took a tighter grip of the steering wheel.
"Oh, what shall we do!" cried Grace, for she hated a thunderstorm worse than she hated anything else on earth. "We can't go on this way, Betty. We're likely to get struck any moment."
"Well, I don't see that we'll be any less likely to get struck if we stand still," retorted Betty, a little sharply, for the situation was becoming wearing, to say the least. "If you can suggest any way that we can get out of this fix—" the sentence was cut short by a still louder and more terrifying clap of thunder.
Grace huddled in her seat, miserably trying not to die of fright.