Then she laughed again. "There I go frettin' again. I guess the Lord knows they're, there and He isn't going to smash them if Polly really needs them."
She dressed herself hastily and ran down the ladder and around behind the cookhouse, where a strange sight met her eyes. The cookhouse roof had been blown off and placed over the poppies, where it had sheltered them from every hailstone.
Pearl looked under the roof. The poppies stood there straight and beautiful, no doubt wondering what big thing it was that hid them from the sun.
When Tom and his father went out in the early dawn to investigate the damage done by the storm, they found that only a narrow strip through the field in front of the house had been touched.
The hail had played a strange trick; beating down the grain along this narrow path, just as if a mighty roller had come through it, until it reached the house, on the other side of which not one trace of damage could be found.
"Didn't we get off lucky?" Tom exclaimed "and the rest of the grain is not even lodged. Why, twenty-five dollars would cover the whole loss, cookhouse roof and all."
His father was looking over the rippling field, green-gold in the rosy dawn. He started uncomfortably at Tom's words.
Twenty-five dollars!