Ludlum laughed; his face was restored to its serene beauty. Obviously, he again loved his Uncle Lucius, and a perfect understanding, mysterious to the parents, now existed between godfather and godson. In celebration, Ludlum shouted and ran to caper in the garden. “By George!” said John Thomas. “You seem to understand him! I don’t. I don’t know what the dickens is in his mind, half the time.” Mrs. Thomas laughed condescendingly. “No wonder!” she said. “You’re down-town all the daytime and never see him except at breakfast and in the evenings.” “There’s one thing puzzles me about it,” said John. “If you understand him so well, why don’t you ever tell _me_ how to? What made him so smart-alecky to Lucius just now?” Again she laughed with condescension. “Why, Luddie didn’t mean to be fresh at all. He just spoke without thinking.” But upon hearing this interpretation, Mr. Allen cast a rueful glance at his lovely cousin. “Quite so!” he said. “Children can’t tell their reasons, but they’ve always got ’em!” “Oh, no, they haven’t,” she laughed. And then she jumped, for there came a heavy booming of thunder from that part of the sky which the roof of the porch concealed from them. The sunshine over the pink-speckled garden vanished; all the blossoms lost colour and grew wan, fluttering in an ominous breeze; at once a high wind whipped round the house and the row of straight poplars beyond the garden showed silver sides. “_Luddie!_” shrieked Mrs. Thomas; and he shrieked in answer; came running, just ahead of the rain. She seized his hand, and fled with him into the house. “You remember how afraid they are of lightning,” said John apologetically. “Lightning and thunder. I never could understand it, but I suppose it’s genuine and painful.” “It’s both,” the visitor remarked. “You wouldn’t think I’m that way, too, would you?” “You are?” “Makes me nervous as a cat.” “Did you inherit it?” “I don’t think so,” said Lucius; and he waved his host’s silent offer of a cigar. “No, thanks. Never want to smoke in a thunder-storm. I—_Whoo!_” he interrupted himself, as a flare of light and a catastrophe of sound came simultaneously. “Let’s go in,” he said mildly. “Not I. I love to watch it.” “Well——” Lucius paused, but at a renewal of the catastrophe, “Excuse _me_!” he said, and tarried no longer. He found Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum in the centre of the darkened drawing-room. She was sitting in a gilt chair with her feet off the floor and upon a rung of the chair; and four heavy, flat-bottomed drinking-glasses were upon the floor, each of them containing the foot of a leg of the gilt chair. Ludlum was upon her lap. “Don’t you believe in insulation, Lucius?” she asked anxiously. “As long as we sit like this, we can’t be struck, can we?” He put on his glasses and gave her a solemn stare before replying. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Of course John is safer out on the porch than we are in here.”