"Well, at any rate she did it, and then she got into the middle of a feather bed, and there she sat and covered her eyes and cried. Of course I thought something dreadful was going to happen, and I cried and screamed because she did. That was the first time I thought of being afraid of thunder, and it was a long, long time before I got over it."
"What cured you at last?" asked Emily, who had come out of her room just in time to hear Annette's story.
"Why, I was sitting up with my little sister one night. She had had a dreadful time of the ear-ache, and had not slept any for several nights, nor mother either, and finally I persuaded her to go to bed and leave Josy with me. I sang to her, and told her stories, and after a while she got asleep in my lap. About eleven o'clock a terrible thunder storm came up—oh, a great deal worse than that last night. I had left the blinds open and the curtains up to please Josy, because she liked to look out and see the moonlight, and of course, as she was asleep in my arms, I could not get up to shut them."
"Couldn't you put her down?" asked Almira.
"Not without waking her, and I wouldn't have done that for the world. She did not seem to mind the thunder at all, though it was the loudest I ever heard. So I began to repeat all the Psalms and Bible verses I could remember, and then all the hymns, and I managed to sit still all through the storm, though it was pretty hard work, especially as the lightning struck a tree in the meadow close by our house."
"How could you do it?" asked Almira.
"Why I had to!" said Annette. "Because I did not want to wake mother or Josy. Mother never knew a word about it till morning."
"Well," said Almira, "all I have to say is, I should like to see myself sitting with the blinds open all through a thunder storm, for fear of waking one of our young ones. I guess it will be after this when I do."
"I guess it will!" said Belle. "And did that cure you, Manny?"
"Pretty much," replied Annette. "I never seemed to care much for thunder after that. I always say to myself, if I could keep from making a fuss once, I can again; and besides," she added, blushing, as she always did when she spoke on religious subjects,—"you know Somebody can take care of us as well in a thunder storm as any other time."