"Mr. Fletcher complimented you on having your wits about you," pursued Emily, "but I think you were as much frightened as any of us. I saw you turn pale at every clap of thunder, and even when all the rest of us were attending to Mr. Fletcher's stories, you seemed to be listening to the wind."
"I was very much frightened," replied Delia, "but you know it is not my way to make a fuss about things. Do you know, Emily, I could not help feeling as though it were a warning?"
"I had the same feeling," replied Emily.
"A thunder storm is not like any other danger," pursued Delia, thoughtfully. "One is so perfectly helpless. In sickness, or an accident, or even in case of fire, there is always something that one can do, but in a storm there is nothing for it but to sit still and await one's doom. I suppose really religious people feel differently, though Alice Parker was as much alarmed as any one. She was the only person that fainted."
"You know her health is very delicate," said Emily, apologetically. "But about the storm—I felt just as you did—that it was a warning. Oh, Delia, let us take it so. Let us leave off doing wrong, and try to do as we ought. I am sure we shall both be happier in the end. Just think, if we had been killed, where should we be now?"
Emily hid her face, and wept bitterly, and even Delia seemed affected, and said seriously that she would think of it. She evidently desired to avoid further conversation upon the subject, and Emily could not force it upon her.
"To-morrow!" said Delia to herself, as so many have said before her. To-morrow came, and found her seriousness vanished. She made light of her alarm of the night before, and when Emily adverted to their conversation, she turned it off with a jest and an allusion to the past, which silenced Emily completely.
"A thunder storm is not enough to convert me, Emily. It will require an earthquake, at the very least, and then you will see that I shall stay converted. My religion will not be of the intermittent kind."
Of course the storm and its result were the subjects of conversation for the day, and many were the jokes uttered at the expense of the hysterical young ladies, and of poor Mr. Holz, whose wig had been discovered by Cornelius Agrippa, lying on the ground in the farthest part of the garden, and brought to his master by that sagacious quadruped, who was clearly under the impression that he had discovered a rare specimen of the animal kingdom.
"You may laugh, if you please," said Belle, who always took the part of the meek little music master. "Mr. Holz at least tried to do something. He did not think only of himself, as most of the rest of us did. Wasn't Mr. Fletcher grand, though? I wonder what it is about him, that always governs every body on the instant. Even Almira acknowledged the force of his genius last night. Which did you fear most, Almira, the thunder or the Professor?"