“Who is blaming it on you?” laughed Page Allison. “Why, honey, it may be doing worse things in other places. We should be thankful we are on a mountain top instead of in a valley.” Then she drew Mr. Tucker aside and whispered to him: “See here, Zebedee, don’t you think it is up to us somehow to relieve this situation? If we get giddy and act as though it were a privilege to be wet to the skin, don’t you think we might stir up these people and make a lark of this storm instead of a calamity? You remember you told me once that you and Miss Jinny Cox saved the day for a picnic at Monticello when a deluge hit you there?”
Zebedee was the Tucker Twins’ pet name for their father, and Page Allison, their best friend, was also privileged to use the name for that eternally youthful gentleman.
“I’ve been thinking we must do something, but the lightning is so severe that somehow I think I must wait.”
“You are like Mammy Susan who says: ’Whin the Almighty is a-doing his wuck ain’t the time fur a po’ ole nigger ter be a-doin’ hern.’”
“Exactly! But it is letting up a bit now, that is, the lightning is, but the rain is even more terrific.”
A great crash of thunder, coming simultaneously with a flash of lightning that cracked like a whip, put a stop to conversation, and Page, in spite of her bravery, for she was not the least afraid of storms as a rule—clung to Mr. Tucker. Everybody was clinging to everybody else and in the stress of the moment no one was choosy about the person to cling to. Bill cursed his stars that Tillie was hanging on to Skeeter, as pale as a little ghost, when she might just as well be hanging on to him, while he, in turn, was supporting a strange person he had never even met.
“That hit close to us!” exclaimed someone.
“I believe it hit me!” screamed a girl.
“Where are Susan and Oscar?” cried Douglas. “They will be scared to death.”
“When I went down in the kitchen after the tub for the Victrola, Oscar was under the table and Susan was trying to get in the fireless cooker, head first,” volunteered Bill. “The kitchen is really the dryest place on the mountain, I fancy.”