“We paid fourteen dollars,” Pearl said, “and Mary got six dollars on her card.”

“Oh, but you town people don’t have the expenses we have.”

“That’s true, I guess,” Pearl said doubtfully—­she was wondering about the boot bills.  “Pa gets a dollar and a quarter every day, and ma gets seventy-five cents when she washes.  We’re gettin’ on fine.”

Then Mrs. Motherwell made her appearance, and the conversation came to an end.

That afternoon when Pearl had washed the dishes and scrubbed the floor, she went upstairs to the little room to write in her diary.  She knew Mrs. Francis would expect to see something in it, so she wrote laboriously: 

I saw a lot of yalla flowers and black-burds.  The rode was full of dust and wagging marks.  I met a man with a top buggy and smelt a skunk.  Mrs. M. made a kake to-day—­there was no lickens.

   I’m goin’ to tidy up the granary for Arthur.  He’s
   offel nice—­an’ told me about London Bridge—­it hasn’t
   fallen down at all, he says, that’s just a song.

All day long the air had been heavy and close, and that night while Pearl was asleep the face of the heavens was darkened with storm-clouds.  Great rolling masses came up from the west, shot through with flashes of lightening, and the heavy silence was more ominous than the loudest thunder would have been.  The wind began in the hills, gusty and fitful at first, then bursting with violence over the plain below.  There was a cutting whine in it, like the whang of stretched steel, fateful, deadly as the singing of bullets, chilling the farmer’s heart, for he knows it means hail.

Pearl woke and sat up in bed.  The lightning flashed in the little window, leaving the room as black as ink.  She listened to the whistling wind.

“It’s the hail,” she whispered delightedly.  “I knew the Lord would find a way to open the windy without me puttin’ my fist through it—­I’ll have a look at the clouds to see if they have that white edge on them.  No—­I won’t either—­it isn’t my put in.  I’ll just lave the Lord alone.  Nothin’ makes me madder than when I promise Tommy or Mary or any of them something and then have them frettin’ all the time about whether or not I’ll get it done.  I’d like to see the clouds though.  I’ll bet they’re a sight, just like what Camilla sings about: 

   Dark is His path on the wings o’ the storm.

In the kitchen below the Motherwells gathered with pale faces.  The windows shook and rattled in their casings.

“Keep away from the stove, Tom,” Mrs. Motherwell said, trembling.  “That’s where the lightnin’ strikes.”

Tom’s teeth were chattering.

“This’ll fix the wheat that’s standing, every—­bit of it,” Sam said.  He did not make it quite as strong as he intended.  Something had taken the profanity out of him.

“Hadn’t you better go up and bring the kid down, ma?” Tom asked, thinking of Pearl.