Recalling Isadora, the thought then jumped into my head that it would be wise for us, if the granddaughter didn’t show up, to inquire in Pardyville if an animal show had stopped there recently. If so, that would sort of explain the old man’s possession of the unusual bird. To some crazy purpose it could have followed him out of the show tent, or, to his discredit, he could have stolen it. Certainly, familiar as he was with its name, he must know where it came from. He had the stuff in his head to tell us. The trouble was his memory was like a locked door—he couldn’t open it until he found the key.
Well, to pick up my story, we shut the kitchen door, convinced now that the wind had opened it. It was queer, of course, that the latch had slipped just when the gander wanted to come in. But that was nothing. Very probably the visitor, hearing us inside, had been waiting at the door for some time, hoping for a chance to get in. And wise to the growing wind and darkened moon, which meant a summer storm, it had done its tap! ... tap! ... tap! ... stuff, to get shelter, just when the wind was strong enough to spring the loose latch.
Taking a sort of shine to the unusual gander, with all of its stuck-up ways, Poppy and I would have made it comfortable for the night in the kitchen, if we had been boss. But the thought of keeping a gander in the house, even though it was an unusual gander, and probably house broken, was too much for Mrs. Doane. You should have heard her explode when we suggested it!
“Laws-a-me!” she stiffly turned us down, getting a broom to drive the intruder away. “Why don’t you think next of turning the house into a pigsty? If you’re so deeply concerned over the gander’s comfort, there’s a barn out back. Certainly, it isn’t going to roost here. Imagine what Corbin Danver would say, could he speak from the grave, to have his kitchen turned into a gander roost. Just imagine!”
The moon was gone now, as I say. The sky was black with tumbling storm clouds. And on the way to the barn, where we fastened the gander in for the night, Poppy and I used a flashlight. What a quick change, I thought, from early evening. The moon had been full of light then. Now the whole world was smothered under a heavy black blanket.
I don’t mind summer storms as a rule. The lightning never scares me. For I have a sort of feeling that God makes the lightning. And certainly, with me taking up the Sunday-school collection week after week, and never hooking a penny, but cheerfully giving instead, He wouldn’t want to jab the deadly lightning at me. That wouldn’t be right. When you’re good you expect to be used good. No, even if the lightning is close by, I have a sort of steady confidence that no harm will come to me. The thunder, of course, makes a fellow jump, especially if he’s half asleep. But a few jumps more or less isn’t anything. As for the rain, I love to hear it—when I’m in bed, I mean. Some rainy nights when it isn’t too hot I sleep in the attic, just to hear the patter! patter! on the roof. Music like that brings out all the peace that there is inside of a fellow, I want to tell you.
But to-night I seemed sort of unprotected in the growing storm. I felt as though certain black scheming things that God’s moonlight had kept away were creeping in to an evil purpose. Couple up a slashing, pounding storm with this mysterious house, I thought, and there was no telling what wasn’t liable to happen.
Returning to the house, after taking care of the gander, we heard Mrs. Doane putting her thick-headed husband to bed on the second floor. Earlier in the evening she had pointed out a room for us—though not the room that Poppy had hoped for!—and as it was long past our own bedtime, as well as the old man’s, we locked the lower doors and lighted our way up the back staircase with a small hand lamp.
Outside, the wind was swishing around the corners of the house to beat the cars. And a giant, or so it seemed to me in crazy fancy, was slinging sand at the windows by the scoop full. Boy, was I ever glad now that I was inside, and not out there!
Pretty soon the rain came. Not an ordinary rain, but a sort of mixed up cyclone and cloudburst. It was some storm, let me tell you. I never hope to see a worse one. Looking down on the yard, in the lightning flashes, I could see a big lake. The sand had turned into water.