"I think you are about the prettiest, jolliest ever. I wish you would
let me go off to Mexico engaged to you. It would make it lots easier to
work and I mean to work like a whole regiment and make good. Won't you,
Tillie?"
"Well, I don't care if I do. You are a fine dancer and I think a heap of
you, Bill. I'd rather keep it dark, though, if you don't mind, as it
queers a girl's game sometimes if she gets engaged."
"Lord, no! I don't mind just so I know it myself," and the happy Bill
enfolded his enamorata in his arms, although she carefully admonished
him not to crush her new dress.
"I never dreamed you were thinking about me seriously," she confessed as
she emerged from his embrace.
"Honest? Been dotty about you ever since you took me for a jitney driver
and tipped me a quarter. Got it yet."
"Look how dark it is! I believe we are going to have a storm. What a
great black cloud! Let's hurry, as I have no idea of getting my frock
wet."
Hurry they did and reached the pavilion just as great drops began to
fall. Bill was in a state of happy excitement over his engagement,
although it was something he must keep to himself. He felt like shouting
it on the housetops, but instead he gave one of his great laughs that
startled Mrs. Carter so she stopped dancing and hunted up Bobby.
"It sounded like bears and lions," she declared, "and I felt uneasy
about my baby."
She found that youngster fast asleep cuddled up in his father's arms,
the father looking very happy and peaceful. Robert Carter felt quite
like a little child himself with his great girls taking care of him.
CHAPTER VII
THE STORM
That storm was always known as "The Storm" by everyone who was at the
Week-End Camp on that night in August. Greendale had been singularly
free from severe storms that season and the Carters had had no
difficulty up to that time in keeping dry. They had had rain in plenty
but never great downpours and their mountain had escaped the lightning
that on several occasions had played havoc not many miles from them.
The day had been exceptionally warm but very clear. The full moon had
taken the place of the sun when night came on and so brilliant was the
glow from that heavenly orb, one could almost fancy heat was reflected
as well as light. The great black cloud that came rolling over the
mountain was as much an astonishment to the dancers in the pavilion as
it was to the moon herself. They refused to recognize the fact that a
storm was coming up and the moon also held her own for some time after
the downpour was upon them. She kept peeping out through rifts in the
clouds and once when the storm was at its fiercest she sailed clear of
all clouds for a few moments, and then it was that the rarest of all
beauties in Nature was beheld by the damp and huddled-up crowd of
week-enders: a lunar rainbow.
It stretched across the valley, a perfect arc with the colors as clearly
defined as a solar bow but infinitely more delicate than any rainbow
ever beheld before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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