“Yes, pourin’. It’s an awful shower.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” asserted Lucy, impatient to be gone. “I never mind the rain.”
“But this is a regular downpour. You’ll get wet to your skin,” Jane objected. “I ain’t a-goin’ to let you go out in it in that thin dress. Ain’t we got an umbrella somewheres, ’Liza?”
“I dunno,” Eliza answered vaguely.
The sudden shower and the furious tossing of the trees did not impress themselves on her dull mind. Only one thought possessed her brain,—the sinking dread of the moment when Lucy should be gone and Martin would empty the vials of his waiting wrath on all their heads.
“Indeed I don’t in the least need an 128 umbrella,” Lucy protested. “I’ll run right along. Please do not bother.”
“You’ll get wet an’ be sick,” Mary declared, launching into the conversation at the mention of possible chills and fevers.
Lucy laughed unsteadily.
“Oh, no, I shan’t. Good night.”
She had crossed the veranda and was at the brink of the flight of steps when heavy feet came striding after her.