But one day something happened that stopped our playing Robinson Crusoe or anything else for a long time. Mother had sent Billy on an errand a long way off, Kate Ames was sick, and Teddy had to stay at home to amuse her, and I was in the house, in the sitting-room with mother.
The morning had been very pleasant and warm, and though I wished we were all together in the cellar at play, I was quite contented with a book called Beechnut, a Franconia story, and I was thinking that Beechnut was almost just like Billy. Mother laid down her sewing, and went out of the room, patting my cheek with her kind hand as she passed, to tell Biddy something about dinner.
In a few minutes it grew so dark that I looked out of the window to see what made it, and saw the sky covering with a big black cloud that unrolled ever so fast, and the wind began to blow very hard, and the trees bent and turned over the white sides of their leaves in it. If Billy had been at home I should have gone out with him to run in the wind, because it feels so pleasant on my cheeks and in my hair, just as flowing water looks. It grew darker, began to rain, and the wind grew louder, with a queer sound; but I could see to read, and I got so interested in Beechnut that, though I saw out of the side of my eye some one go by the window, I did not really think about it, but kept on reading till I heard papa's voice in the next room, and heard mamma say:
"I'm so glad you're safe in the house; but where can Billy be? I sent him to Morton's, but he ought to have been home an hour ago. It's a perfect hurricane!"
"Oh, he'll do," said papa; "he's under cover somewhere, but—"
I couldn't hear any more, for just then the windows rattled; the floor shook so I could hardly keep my seat. There was an awful roar of wind, a crackling sound in the walls, a crash outside as if a load of coal were being tumbled into the bin, and the pretty vases on the mantel fell and broke to pieces on the floor. I ran as well as I could, and caught hold of papa. He held mamma's hands. She was white, and looked so strange. It frightened me more than all the rest, and I couldn't keep from crying.
"Hurricane! my dear," I heard papa say; "it's an earthquake shock. I do wish we knew where Billy is."
Then I remembered, and I said, "Oh, mamma, don't be frightened; Billy came in half an hour ago."
But when papa, mamma, and I—Biddy coming after us, with her apron up over her face, and crying, "Och, what a nize!" and "God save us!" every step—went from room to room, we didn't find Billy.
"Maggie, are you sure you saw him?" said mamma, stopping me, with both her hands on my shoulders, at the head of the stairs—"are you sure?"