Then she laughed again. "There I go frettin' again. I guess the Lord knows they're, there and He isn't going to smash them if Polly really needs them." She dressed herself hastily and ran down the ladder and around behind the cookhouse, where a strange sight met her eyes. The cookhouse roof had been blown off and placed over the poppies, where it had sheltered them from every hailstone. Pearl looked under the roof. The poppies stood there straight and beautiful, no doubt wondering what big thing it was that hid them from the sun. When Tom and his father went out in the early dawn to investigate the damage done by the storm, they found that only a narrow strip through the field in front of the house had been touched. The hail had played a strange trick; beating down the grain along this narrow path, just as if a mighty roller had come through it, until it reached the house, on the other side of which not one trace of damage could be found. "Didn't we get off lucky?" Tom exclaimed "and the rest of the grain is not even lodged. Why, twenty-five dollars would cover the whole loss, cookhouse roof and all." His father was looking over the rippling field, green-gold in the rosy dawn. He started uncomfortably at Tom's words. Twenty-five dollars! CHAPTER XV INASMUCH After sundown one night Pearl's resolve was carried into action. She picked a shoe-box full of poppies, wrapping the stems carefully in wet newspaper. She put the cover on, and wrapped the box neatly. Then she wrote the address. She wrote it painfully, laboriously, in round blocky letters. Pearl always put her tongue out when she was doing anything that required minute attention. She was so anxious to have the address just right that her tongue was almost around to her ear. The address read: Miss Polly Bragg, english gurl and sick with fever Brandon Hospittle Brandon. Then she drew a design around it. Jimmy's teacher had made them once in Jimmy's scribbler, just beautiful. She was sorry she could not do a bird with a long strip of tape in his mouth with "Think of Me" or "From a Friend" or "Love the Giver" on it. Ma knew a man once who could do them, quick as wink. He died a drunkard with delirium trimmings, but was terrible smart. Then she stuck, under the string, a letter she had written to Camilla. Camilla would get them sent to Polly. "I know how to get them sent to Camilla too, you bet," she murmured. "There are two ways, both good ones, too. Jim Russell is one way. Jim knows what flowers are to folks." She crept softly down the stairs. Mrs Motherwell had left the kitchen and no one was about. The men were all down at the barn.