“Now isn’t that remarkable, my dear,” said Miss Lindon—“I do exactly the same! I draw down the blinds, and hide scissors away in a drawer, and throw a woolen shawl over the steel fender, and then I put my head under the blankets. My Aunt Margery, I remember, invariably used to go and sit in the coal-cellar. But she was a strong-minded woman, and would put her foot on a black beetle as soon as look at it. I hope I’m fond of most of God’s creatures, but a black beetle frightens me out of my wits.”
“What do you think of thunder-storms, Stella?” John asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
“I’m rather frightened,” she confessed. “Not because I think they’ll hurt me.” She paused and sighed. “I never could understand them.”
“What do you mean by understanding a thunder-storm?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “You either understand things or you don’t.”
Herold broke in to spare her further explanation. “There was a splendid one the week before last in the mountains—a real Walpurgisnacht. It seemed as though hell had broken loose.”
He described it in his vivid way. The elderly ladies looked at the glimmer of white shirt-front and the glowing cigarette-end by which alone he was revealed, and wondered at the heroical, or, as it seemed in the unconfessed depths of their souls, the God-defying qualities of male humanity. A few resounding splashes fell from the sky. The party rose hurriedly.
“Gad! we’re in for it,” cried Sir Oliver. “Let us get indoors.”
A flash of lightning rent the southern sky, and a clap of thunder broke over the channel, and the rain came down like a waterspout. In the drawing-room Lady Blount put her hand before her eyes.
“You must all forgive me. I can’t stand it. I must go up-stairs. Besides, it’s late, very near bed-time. My dear Miss Lindon, shall we go?”