He stared at her as if a flash of lightning had struck him.
"That is it! that is it!" And he struck his forehead as if something he had been seeking for in vain had suddenly occurred to him.
"What did he want? Oh, nothing, Gertrude, nothing of any consequence."
She looked at him in surprise, but she said nothing. It was not her way to ask a second time when she got no answer. It really was of no consequence.
CHAPTER XII.
It had rained heavily in the night, with thunder and lightning, but nature seemed to have no mind to-day to carry out her coquettish love of contrasts; she did not laugh, as usual, with redoubled gayety in blue sky and golden sunshine on forest and field: gloomily she spread a gray curtain over the landscape, so uniformly gray that the sun could not find the smallest cleft through which to send down a friendly greeting, and it rained unceasingly, a perfect country rain.
Frank came back from the fields rejoicing over the weather, and Gertrude waved her handkerchief to him out of the window as she did every morning.
"All the flowers are ruined, Frank," she cried down to him, "what a pity!"
He came up in high good humor. "No money could pay for this rain, darling," he said; "I am a real farmer now, my mood varies according to the weather."
"And mine too!" remarked his wife. "Such a gray day makes me melancholy."