Emily was Mrs. Barnes’ favorite cousin, although only a second cousin.  Her mother, Sarah Cahoon, Thankful’s own cousin, had married a man named Howes.  Emily was the only child by this marriage.  But later there was another marriage, this time to a person named Hobbs, and there were five little Hobbses.  Papa Hobbs worked occasionally, but not often.  His wife and Emily worked all the time.  The latter had been teaching school in Middleboro, but now it was spring vacation.  So when Aunt Thankful suggested the Cape Cod tour of inspection Emily gladly agreed to go.  The Hobbs house was not a haven of joy, especially to Mr. Hobbs’ stepdaughter, and almost any change was likely to be an agreeable one.

They had left South Middleboro that afternoon.  The rain began when the train reached West Ostable.  At Bayport it had become a storm.  At Wellmouth Centre it was a gale and a miniature flood.  And now, shut up in the back part of the depot-wagon, with the roaring wind and splashing, beating rain outside, Thankful’s references to fish and ducks and mermaids, even to Mount Ararat, seemed to Emily quite appropriate.  They had planned to spend the night at the East Wellmouth hotel and visit the Barnes’ property in the morning.  But it was five long miles to that hotel from the Wellmouth Centre station.  Their progress so far had been slow enough.  Now they had stopped altogether.

A flash of light showed above the top of the carriage boot.

“Mercy on us!” cried Aunt Thankful.  “Is that lightnin’?  All we need to make this complete is to be struck by lightnin’.  No, ‘tain’t lightnin’, it’s just the lantern.  Our pilot’s comin’ back, I guess likely.  Well, he ain’t been washed away, that’s one comfort.”

Winnie S., holding the lantern in his hand, reappeared beneath the boot.  Raindrops sparkled on his eyebrows, his nose and the point of his chin.

“Judas priest!” he gasped.  “If this ain’t—­”

“You needn’t say it.  We’ll agree with you,” interrupted Mrs. Barnes, hastily.  “Is anything the matter?”

The driver’s reply was in the form of elaborate sarcasm.

“Oh, no!” he drawled, “there wasn’t nothin’ the matter.  Just a few million pines blowed across the road and the breechin’ busted and the for’ard wheel about ready to come off, that’s all.  Maybe there’s a few other things I didn’t notice, but that’s all I see.”

“Humph!  Well, they’ll do for a spell.  How’s the weather, any worse?”

“Worse?  No! they ain’t no worse made.  Looks as if ‘twas breakin’ a little over to west’ard, fur’s that goes.  But how in the nation we’ll ever fetch East Wellmouth, I don’t know.  Git dap!  Git dap!  Have you growed fast?”

General Jackson pulled one foot after the other from the mud and the wagon rocked and floundered as its pilot steered it past the fallen trees.  For the next twenty minutes no one spoke.  Then Winnie S. breathed a sigh of thankfulness.