"So," she said sneeringly, "you make the thunder a pretext for showing your painted doll's-face to the fellows here. Your mother would do well to keep you at home."
"Mother was asleep, and she is not afraid of thunder like me. When that dreadful flash of lightning came, I dared not stay alone in the house."
"Are you a bit safer, think you, here?" sneered the witch-like woman. "It was monstrous kind of you to leave your poor old mother exposed to danger, while you run away from it like a coward! A bad excuse, however, I've heard, is better than none. In your case I think it worse."
"I did not think of that," said Sophy, with unaffected simplicity, rising to go. "Mother never cares for it, but it makes me tremble from head to foot, and almost drives me beside myself. I can't tell why, but it has always been so with me ever since I was a little child."
As she finished speaking, another long protracted peal of thunder rolled through the heavens and shook the house, and Sophy sank down gasping in her chair. The handsome young sailor was at her side with a glass of ale.
"Never mind that cross old woman, my dear, she scolds and rules us all. Take a sup of this,—it will bring the roses back to your cheeks. Why, you are as pale as the ghost we were talking of when you came in."
"Oh, I'm such a coward!" sobbed Sophy. "Ah, there it comes again—the lightning will blind me!"—and she shrieked and threw her apron over her head, as another terrific peal burst solemnly above them. "I would rather see twenty ghosts than hear the like of that again. Did not you feel the earth shake?"
"Now for the rain!" cried the little tailor, as a few heavy drops first splashed upon the door-sill, then there was the rush and roar of a hurricane, and the water burst from the skies in torrents, streaming over the door-sill and beating through the chinks in the ill-glazed windows.
"Shut the door, man! can't you?" vociferated Tom Weston to the tailor. "The rain pours in like a flood, and it will give the young lady cold."
"Poor, delicate creature," said Martha; "as if a few drops of rain could hurt the like o' her!"