We're gettin' on fine."
Then Mrs. Motherwell made her appearance, and the
conversation came to an end.
That afternoon when Pearl had washed the dishes and
scrubbed the floor, she went upstairs to the little room
to write in her diary. She knew Mrs. Francis would expect
to see something in it, so she wrote laboriously:
I saw a lot of yalla flowers and black-burds. The rode
was full of dust and wagging marks. I met a man with
a top buggy and smelt a skunk. Mrs. M. made a kake
to-day--there was no lickens.
I'm goin' to tidy up the granary for Arthur. He's
offel nice--an' told me about London Bridge--it hasn't
fallen down at all, he says, that's just a song.
All day long the air had been heavy and close, and that
night while Pearl was asleep the face of the heavens was
darkened with storm-clouds. Great rolling masses came up
from the west, shot through with flashes of lightening,
and the heavy silence was more ominous than the loudest
thunder would have been. The wind began in the hills,
gusty and fitful at first, then bursting with violence
over the plain below. There was a cutting whine in it,
like the whang of stretched steel, fateful, deadly as
the singing of bullets, chilling the farmer's heart, for
he knows it means hail.
Pearl woke and sat up in bed. The lightning flashed in
the little window, leaving the room as black as ink. She
listened to the whistling wind.
"It's the hail," she whispered delightedly.
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