At any rate, Grandfather Holabird sat with father on the north piazza, out of the way of the strong south-wind; and he had out a big wallet, and a great many papers, and he stayed and stayed, from just after dinner-time till almost the middle of the afternoon, so that father did not go down to his office at all; and when old Mr. Holabird went home at last, he walked over with him.  Just after they had gone Leslie Goldthwaite and Harry stopped, “for a minute only,” they said; for the south-wind had brought up clouds, and there was rain threatening.  That was how we all happened to be just as we were that night of the September gale; for it was the September gale of last year that was coming.

The wind had been queer, in gusts, all day; yet the weather had been soft and mild.  We had opened windows for the pleasant air, and shut them again in a hurry when the papers blew about, and the pictures swung to and fro against the walls.  Once that afternoon, somebody had left doors open through the brown room and the dining-room, where a window was thrown up, as we could have it there where the three were all on one side.  Ruth was coming down stairs, and saw grandfather’s papers give a whirl out of his lap and across the piazza floor upon the gravel.  If she had not sprung so quickly and gathered them all up for him, some of them might have blown quite away, and led father a chase after them over the hill.  After that, old Mr. Holabird put them up in his wallet again, and when they had talked a few minutes more they went off together to the old house.

[Illustration]

It was wonderful how that wind and rain did come up.  The few minutes that Harry and Leslie stopped with us, and then the few more they took to consider whether it would do for Leslie to try to walk home, just settled it that nobody could stir until there should be some sort of lull or holding up.

Out of the far southerly hills came the blast, rending and crashing; the first swirls of rain that flung themselves against our windows seemed as if they might have rushed ten miles, horizontally, before they got a chance to drop; the trees bent down and sprang again, and lashed the air to and fro; chips and leaves and fragments of all strange sorts took the wonderful opportunity and went soaring aloft and onward in a false, plebeian triumph.

The rain came harder, in great streams; but it all went by in white, wavy drifts; it seemed to rain from south to north across the country,—­not to fall from heaven to earth; we wondered if it would fall anywhere.  It beat against the house; that stood up in its way; it rained straight in at the window-sills and under the doors; we ran about the house with cloths and sponges to sop it up from cushions and carpets.

“I say, Mrs. Housekeeper!” called out Stephen from above, “look out for father’s dressing-room!  It’s all afloat,—­hair-brushes out on voyages of discovery, and a horrid little kelpie sculling round on a hat-box!”