“What’s up, lad?” he said, as he plunged his face down into one of the dripping pails, and then after scrubbing and sputtering for a while he reached out blindly for a, towel, which one of the others tossed into his hands.  When his eyes were free, he drew a long breath, saying, “Water fixes a fellow all right.”  But as he did this he noticed something that made him exclaim sharply.  It was the sight of Old Tilly washing himself with one hand, while around the wrist of the other a grimy handkerchief was bound.  “Why didn’t you say you were hurt?” he said, coming over to Old Tilly’s side.  “What is it, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Old Tilly, with an impatient nod of his head.  “Maybe it’s where the lightning ran down,” he said, with a laugh.

“Lightning!—­not much!  Come, out with it.  What is it?”

“Oh, it’s just a tear on an old nail.  One of those steers got a little ugly, and I jumped back too suddenly.  It’s nothing.”

“We’ll have to take your word for it,” said Kent.  But he very soberly turned to the lunch baskets.  It was just as they had packed up everything neatly and were mounting their wheels to ride away, that a wagon came rumbling down the grassy road and turned in to the farmyard.  A young man with a limp felt hat was on the seat with a woman wearing a brown straw hat, while a tiny girl in a pink sunbonnet was nestled down between them.

“Halloo!” said the man, as he saw the boys.  “Just leavin’?”

“Yes, sir,” said Old Tilly, respectfully.  “We took the liberty of sleeping in your barn last night.  You see the storm kept us there all night.”

“Well, the storm kept us, too,” said the young farmer, reaching for the little child and setting her down by the pump, and then helping the woman to alight.

The young woman gave a relieved look around, first at the barn and then at the house, and said delightedly: 

“Oh, Jim, how good it does seem to see everything safe!  I can’t believe my eyes hardly.”  And she added, turning to the boys with a slightly embarrassed laugh, “I never was very good to stay away from home nights, and we didn’t mean to stay last night, but the rain kept us.  It just seemed to me that with every clap of thunder we’d find everything burned to ashes, and the whole place gone.”

Tears came into her eyes, as she turned and gave her hand to the little child.  “Well, I’m going in to get breakfast,” she said, a glad, tremulous light showing across her face.  “You better bring these boys in to breakfast, Jim.  If they’ve just slept in the barn they must be hungry.”  Then turning back again with a heartier laugh, “I feel that glad to see everything, even to the chickens, just as we left them, that I wouldn’t object to asking the President of the United States to breakfast.  You ain’t from around here, are you?” she asked, looking at the boys.  “I thought not.  And you’re hungry, I’ll wager,” she said, as she bustled away with the little girl tugging at her skirts, not waiting for the boys to disaffirm, as they most assuredly would have done had a chance been given them, for they were not in the least hungry.  But then, what was a cold luncheon taken from a bicycle basket compared with a warm breakfast that might include ham and eggs?