Flora stood aside, and the three women entered with a rush. Lois, standing near the door front, saw them coming through the greenish-yellow gloom, their three black figures scudding before the wind like black-sailed ships. "Land sakes!" shrieked out Mrs. Babcock, "there's Lois now! Lois, how are you? I'd like to know what that girl we met at the gate meant telling us they didn't live here. Why, Lois Field, how do you do? Where's your mother? I guess we'd better step right in, an' not stop to talk. It's an awful tempest. I'm dreadful afraid my bonnet trimmin' will spot." They all scurried up the steps and into the house. Then the women turned and kissed Lois, and raised a little clamor of delight over her. She stood panting. She did not ask them into the sitting-room. Her head whirled. It seemed to her that the end of everything had come. But Mrs. Babcock turned toward the sitting-room door. She had pulled off her bonnet, and was wiping it anxiously with her handkerchief. "This is the way, ain't it?" she said. Lois followed them in helplessly. The room was dark as night, for the shutters were closed. Mrs. Babcock flung one open peremptorily. "We'll break our necks here, if we don't have some light," she said. The hail began to rattle on the window-panes. "It's hailin'!" the women chorussed. "Are your windows all shut?" Mrs. Babcock demanded of Lois. And the girl said, in a dazed way, that the bedroom windows were open, and then went mechanically to shut them. "Shut the blinds, too!" screamed Mrs. Babcock. "The hail's comin' in this side terrible heavy. I'm afraid it'll break the glass." Mrs. Babcock herself, her face screwed tightly against an onslaught of wind and hail, shut the blinds, and the room was again plunged in darkness. "We'll have to stan' it," said she. "Mis' Field don't want her windows all broke in. That's dreadful sharp." Thunder shook the house like an explosion. The women looked at each other with awed faces. "Where is your mother? Why don't she come in here?" Mrs. Babcock asked excitedly of Lois returning from the bedroom. "She's gone berrying," replied Lois, feebly. She sank into a chair. "Gone berryin'!" screamed Mrs. Babcock, and the other women echoed her. "Yes'm." "When did she go?" "Right after dinner." "Right after dinner, an' she ain't got home yet! Out in this awful tempest! Well, she'll be killed. You'll never see her again, that's all. A berry pasture is the most dangerous place in creation in a thunder-shower. Out berryin' in all this hail an' thunder an' lightnin'!" Mrs. Green pressed close up to Lois. "Ain't you any idea where she's gone?" said she. "If you have, I'll jest slip off my dress skirt, an' you give me an old shawl, an' I'll go with you an' see if we can't find her." "I'll go, too," cried Amanda. "Don't you know which way they went, Lois?" Just then the south side-door slammed sharply. "She's come," said Lois, in a strained voice.