The large blue eyes opened wide upon the questioner in half incredulous, reproachful surprise, then turned upon the beautiful, gentle face of Mrs. Travilla with an expression of ardent affection mingled with admiration and respect.  “O Aunt Lucy! could you b’lieve I’d do that to my mamma?”

The very thought of so wounding that tender mother heart was evidently so full of pain to the little one, that Elsie could not refrain from responding to the appeal, “Mamma knows you would not, darling.”

“Oh, no, mamma, ’cause I love you!” cried the child, the young face growing bright with smiles.

“Atmospheric influences have often a great deal to do with these things; do you not find it so?” Elsie said, turning to her friend.

“Yes, I have noticed that!” Lucy said, catching gladly at the suggestion:  “and the air is certainly unusually oppressive this morning.  I feel nervous myself.  I think we’ll have a gust before night.”

The last words were spoken in an undertone, but the quick ear of Gertrude caught them.  “Then I shan’t go to school,” she announced decidedly.

“Nonsense,” said her mother, “’twon’t be here till afternoon; probably not till night, if at all.”

“Now, ma, you’re just saying that.  Aunt Elsie, do you really think it won’t come soon?”

Glancing through the open window at the mountains and the sky, Elsie answered that she saw no present indications of a storm; there was nothing to betoken it but the heat and closeness of the air.

“Are you afraid of thunder, Aunt Elsie?” asked Harry.

“Lightning, you silly boy,” corrected Gertrude, “nobody’s afraid of thunder.”

“Yes, you are,” he retorted.  “You just ought to see, Ed, how scared she gets,” and Harry laughed scornfully.

Gertrude was ready with an indignant retort, but her mother stopped her.  “If you are really brave, Gertrude, you can have an excellent opportunity to show it when the storm comes.”  Then to Harry, “Let your sister alone, or I’ll send you from the room.”

The gust, a very severe one, came in the afternoon.  Before it was fairly upon them, Lucy, herself pale with terror, had collected her children in a darkened room and seated them all on a feather-bed, where they remained during the storm, half stifled by the heat, the little ones clinging to their mother, hiding their heads in her lap and crying with fear.

Elsie and her children formed a different group; the mother the central figure here also, her darlings gathered closely about her, in her dressing-room—­at a safe distance from the open windows—­watching with awed delight, the bursting of the storm clouds over the mountain-tops, the play of the lightning, the sweep of the rain down from the heights into the valleys and river below, listening to the crash and roar of the thunder as it reverberated among the hills, one echo taking it up after another, and repeating it to the next, till it sounded like the explosions of many batteries of heavy artillery, now near at hand, now farther and farther away.