Priscilla said that nothing was further from her expectations, but still she thought—but of course beggars can’t be choosers, and after all a primrose by the river’s brim was still a yellow primrose, and a joy to the cottage hospital.
“And a black cloud is a beast of a thing when it bursts,” added Rosa, pointing to the menace in the distance, above the balloon-like foliage of the immemorial elms.
Priscilla shook her head.
“We’ll do it,” she cried; “yes, if we hurry. I don’t want to get this frock wet, so we’ll rush for the primroses and shelter at the house. It will be an April shower, but we’ll dodge it.”
“No fear,” acquiesced Rosa.
Down they plunged among the trees of the long slope, at the bottom of which the trout stream curled among the mossy stones, spreading its delicate white floss over some, and threading the narrows with a cord of silk, and then spattering the ferns on each side of a rock that met its advance too abruptly.
In a few minutes the girls were among the primroses. They were like the yellow pattern upon a green carpet at this place, only one could not see the carpet for the pattern. When the two serviceable baskets were packed with primroses there did not seem to be a clump the less in this garden that appeared to be the very throne of Spring itself—the throne and the golden treasury of the millionaire Spring.
And all the time that they were filling their baskets the blackbirds were making music among the bracken on the opposite slope, and once a great thrush came down with a wild winnowing of wings to a bramble that swung above the ripples of the water. It sounded its cackling note of alarm, and before it had ceased a cuckoo was heard as it flew from among a clump of chestnuts, gorgeous in drapery, to where a solitary ash, not yet green, stood far away from the billowy foliage of the slope.
And then the sunlit land became aware of a shadow sweeping up the valley. The rumble of thunder came from the distance.
“We’re in for it!” cried Rosa, springing up from the carpet where she had been kneeling.
“We’ll be in for it, as fast as we make ourselves—in the porch at least,” shouted Priscilla, catching up her basket and making a run for the zig-zag track up the bank. She was followed by Rosa with all speed, but before they got to the carriage drive at the top the first drops were making kettledrums of the crowns of their straw hats, and once again the organ of the orchestra was beginning to peal.
They gathered up their print skirts and ran like young does for the shelter of the house. It was an example of dignified Georgian, with a pillared porch and square windows. People said there was no nonsense about Overdean Manor; and others remarked that that was a pity. The front was masked by trees from the carriage drive. Some people said that it was just as well that this was so; it gave the horses a chance. No horse could maintain a trot in view of so dignified a front.
But it had an ample porch, and into its sheltering embrace the two girls plunged with only breath enough left for their laughter.
“Not a dozen drops,” they gasped, pinching each other’s blouses at their arms. “Actually not a dozen drops—practically dry—but hot—oh, goodness, wasn’t it hot!” And now they were going to have it in earnest.
They had it in earnest, but only as a spectacle. They were glowing after their race, but the porch contained no seats, and so they leant against the pillars and looked out at the rollicking Spring storm. It came with all the overdone vehemence of a practical jester—a comical bellow and a swirl and a swish; the topmost branches began complaining of their ill-treatment, bending and waving at first gracefully, then wildly—panic-stricken. Then the rain came—a comical flood suggesting the flinging of buckets of water—the rough play of grooms in the stable yard. The air became dark where the first swish of the rain swept by—dark and silent among the trees, while that madcap wind rushed on and made its fun on the fringe of the plantation. Out of the darkness a flash, and out of the distance a bombastic roar of thunder, but not the thunder of a storm that meant devastation; it was more like the laughter of good-humoured gods over some boy’s joke—something that had to do with the bursting of a cistern, or the turning on of a standpipe in the centre of a score of unsuspecting gentlemen wearing tall hats. The girls joined in the laughter of that boisterous thunder; but only for a moment. They became aware of an extraordinary pause—the suspicious silence of a room where the schoolboys are in hiding and ready to jump out on you. Then came the sound of a mighty rushing in the air that was not the rushing of the wind. Half-a-dozen rooks whirled in a badly-balanced flight across the tops of the nearest trees, cawing frantically; and the next instant they were seen by the girls like fish in the tanks of an aquarium. The world had become a world of waters. They were looking out upon a solid wall of water, and a hurricane of hail made up the plate glass in front of the tank.
They watched its changes for the five minutes that it lasted, and the lightning became more real and the thunder more in earnest. Then it went slamming away into the distance, leaving the big sweep of the carriage drive in front of the house the glistening lake of a minute, and transforming the Georgian mansion into an Alpine mountain of innumerable rushing torrents. It seemed as if a thousand secret springs of water had been set free in a moment, and all rushing down through their runnels to the valley.
“It will all be over in a few minutes, now; but wasn’t it a squelcher while it lasted!” cried Rosa, taking a cautious step outside to look round for the rainbow.
“I knew that we could just dodge it if we were slippy,” said Priscilla. “I wish we had some place to sit down.”
“Not worth while. We’ll be off in a minute.”
But it soon became plain that they would not be off quite so soon. When the thunderstorm with its wild blustering had departed, it left behind it, not the blue sky that might reasonably have been expected, but a tame flock of clouds that lumbered onward, discharging their contents upon the earth beneath with no great show of spirit, but with the depressing persistency of the mediocre.
“Hopeless!” sighed Priscilla.
“Horrid!” exclaimed Rosa.
After a few more minutes of waiting, the word “hungry” followed in alliterative sequence from both of them.
“If we could get round to Mrs. Pearce we might have some bread and butter,” suggested Rosa. (Mrs. Pearce was the name of the caretaker, and her premises were naturally at the other side of the Georgian mansion.)
“If we made a rush for the lodge we might have some plovers’ eggs,” said Priscilla.
Rendered desperate and, consequently, courageous by the thought of such dainties, one of the pair suggested the possibility of attracting the attention of the caretaker by ringing the door bell. The idea was a daring one, but they felt that their situation was so desperate as to make a desperate remedy pardonable, if reasonably formulated.
Hallo! there was no need to pull the bell; looking about for the handle, they found that the hall door was ajar to the extent of four or five inches.
“Careless of Mrs. Pearce! We must speak seriously to her about this,” said Rosa.
“When we have eaten her bread and butter,” whispered Priscilla, with a sagacious nod.
They passed into the great square hall, with its imposing pillars supporting the beams of the ceiling, and then they stopped abruptly, for they found themselves confronted by a vivid smell of tobacco smoke.
“Has Mother Pearce been indulging?” whispered Rosa.
“Oh, dear, no; it’s not that