Again she endeavored with the coo of the lullaby to entice the child into forgetting the wind.
But the wind was not to be forgotten. It turned into a tornado. Failing of its effort to tear off the roof of the dugout, it stormed tempestuously, fretfully; it raved, it grumbled, it groaned.
It screamed aloud with a fury not to be appeased or assuaged.
Cyclona had taken her seat in the rocking chair near the hearth. She had laid the crying child in every possible position, across her knee face down, sitting on one of her knees, her hand to his back with gentle pats, and over her shoulder.
All to no avail. It seemed as if the child would never quit sobbing. The sense of her helplessness joined with pity for his distress saddened her to tears.
She was very tired. She had had charge of the child since early morning, when Seth, compelled to attend to his work in the fields, had left him to her.
She bent forward and looked out the window where the long fingers of the ragged rosebush, torn by the wind, tapped ceaselessly at the pane.
"Wind," she implored. "Stop blowing. Don't you know the little baby's mother has gone away? Don't you know the little baby hasn't any mother now; that she's left him and gone away?"
It seemed that the wind had not thought of it in this way. Occupied only with Celia's departure, it had not considered the desolation it had caused.
The long lithe fingers of the twigs ceased their tapping.