“You was just in the nick o’ time, wasn’t you?” said the little round-faced old lady, who was busy catching and putting in a box a flock of little turkeys that flew about the woodhouse squawking and fluttering, while the mother turkey shook her red head and uttered a dissonant protest. “You see,” she explained, “if turkey chicks get wet it’s almost sure to kill ’em. They’re the tenderest little creatures that ever was to raise, an’ the hen turk’s no more sense than to trail out in the rain with ’em, so I’m goin’ to put ’em where they’ll be safe. It’s dreffle late to have little turks, but that hen beats all to steal her nest, an’ seein’ she’s hatched ’em I thought I’d try an’ help her raise ’em. They’ll be good eatin’ along in the winter.” When the last scantily-feathered, long-necked turkey chick had, with Ben and Posey’s help, been captured and placed in the box, and the mother turkey had mounted the edge of it, they had time to notice the neat rows in which the wood was piled, the ground swept hard and clean as a floor, and the tin wash-basin hanging over a bench beside the pump scoured till it shone like silver. “I guess it ain’t nothin’ but a shower,” chirruped their hostess; “come into the house an’ hev some cheers while you wait. I’m glad you happened along, not that I’m afraid, but it’s sort o’ lonesome-like to be alone in a storm.” As she talked she led the way through the kitchen into a big sitting-room, where a new rag carpet made dazzling stripes on the floor, and the lounge and rocking-chair were gay with the brightest of chintz. Posey had already decided that this was almost the nicest old lady she had ever seen; there was something at once placid and cheerful in both tone and manner, and a kindly good-nature seemed to radiate even from her black silk apron. “I declare, for’t, if the rain isn’t blowin’ in at that winder,” she exclaimed as she lowered a sash. “Aren’t you afraid the wind will blow down those great trees on the house?” asked Posey, as she glanced out a little fearfully at the branches bending and twisting in the storm. “La, no, child,” was the placid answer; “they’ve stood worse storms than this. I don’t know what you would have done to have lived here as I did when I was your age. Right in the woods we was then, with the tall trees all around the log house; an’ in a big storm you could hear crash, crash—the trees comin’ down in the woods, an’ didn’t know what minute one would fall on the house. Once there come a real tornado—a windfall, they called it them days; a man in the next town just stepped to the door to look out, an’ a tree struck an’ killed him. Father cleared away around our house, so there shouldn’t be any danger, as soon as he could.” “And did you live here when it was new as that?” asked Ben, whose interest was at once aroused by anything that smacked of old-time stories.