B'lindy's threatened storm was approaching swiftly. The black cloud that had been piling up behind them now overspread the whole western sky. "What a shame—to have it spoil our day! This has been such fun. I'll never forget it, after I've gone." Then, hastily, "Gather up the napkins and the baskets; I promised B'lindy I'd bring them home! Isn't there a short cut home? I'm really dreadfully afraid of lightning." But she had caught something in the expression of Peter Hyde's face that frightened her more than the threatened storm.
"Let's hurry," she cried, running unceremoniously to the automobile.
CHAPTER XXI
DAVY'S GIFT
Real need recognizing no distinction of class, it had been Liz Hopworth who had been summoned to the Hopkins home when Mrs. Hopkins "dropped off" in the middle of the night, leaving ten children motherless.
Over Dan'l's late breakfast Liz, wan-eyed from loss of sleep, but dignified by a new importance, related all the sad circumstances of poor Sarah Hopkins' passing. "Who'd a' thought," she exclaimed as she vigorously beat her pan-cake batter, "yesterday when I see the poor woman out a hangin' her clothes that this blessed night I'd a' been called in to straighten her limbs and do for those poor young 'uns!"
To Nonie and Davy death was a strangely mysterious thing which they took for granted; dogs and cats and calves died; frequently there was a burial in the village cemetery. These had always had an element of excitement which even stirred the Hopworth home, detached though it was from the village life. They looked at Liz, now, with wide eager eyes. To have "straightened poor Sarah Hopkins' limbs" seemed to have transformed her—her tone was kinder, something almost tender gleamed in her tired eyes, and she was making pan-cakes for their breakfast!
"Just fetch that grease, Nonie. Step spry, too—there's a lot to be done before this day's over. Lordy, I thought to myself last night, that the Lord strikes hard—leavin' those ten children that haven't done no wrong without any mother to manage and Timothy Hopkins sittin' there as helpless like he'd been hit over the head, he's that stunned. And scarcely a bite in the house."
Old Dan'l had long since gotten past the day of worrying over the ways of the Lord. Nor to him was there anything particularly startling in a lack of food. His had always been a philosophy that believed that from somewhere or other Providence would provide, and if it didn't—