They rose to their feet constrainedly. John covertly flicked the dust from his trousers, blew his nose, and wiped eyes suffused with emotion. Lucy impatiently shook her white skirt. How she hated these impromptu genuflections which always shortened the wearing life of the skirt and sent it prematurely to the wash. And much washing made it shrink so. Still, her passion was spent and she felt very, very sorry for her husband, and a little guilty in her discontent. If she had come out straight to him from England under no other influence, would she not have been a fairer critic, have taken more kindly to mission work? And was not John really cut out for a missionary, with every reason to be proud of his station’s success? These silent musings, while John awkwardly hummed a hymn tune, were broken in upon by the strident voice and bustling presence of Ann Jamblin. "Well, then, young people" (being three years older than they were she sometimes assumed a maternal air), "if you’ve finished honeymooning, I’ll take the tray away and get the school ready for my sewing class." (To one without: "Pilisilla! Ring the bell three times.") They left the School-house without answering her, hand in hand. Lucy felt so sorry for John that she resolved once more to try to be a missionary’s wife and helpmeet. The intense heat of the forenoon was breeding a thunderstorm, and already the sky was overcast, and a few puffs of cool air were blowing up from the plains. Presently these grew into an alarming dust-storm, a hurricane which blew Bayley’s proofs and manuscript to right and left; and when Lucy rushed in to pick them up she was blinded for a minute by the glare of lightning. Then the wind dropped before a deluge—a grey, sweeping deluge of rain. In trying to save this and that, Lucy and Ann were drenched to the skin and had to change their soaking garments. The change to dry clothes, the rub down somehow cheered them, and made them more friendly. Lucy then returned to Bayley’s study and once more helped him in the returning daylight with his translations. But he was now well into Leviticus, and some passages proved so embarrassing to both Lucy and Josiah that the former broke off with the exclamation, "It’s teatime." And sure enough there sounded the one pleasant summons in the twenty-four hours: the tea bell. The rain had ceased, the darkness had lifted for a while and left the western sky a sweet lemon yellow, out of which a tempered sunlight twinkled. The air had become fresh and uplifting in a dying breeze. The little party met round the tea-table in a mood to jest and to be friendly. Ann, more good-humoured than usual, described her sousing. She also told Lucy she had had two of Lucy’s skirts mended at her sewing lesson, to save her the trouble. Oh, it was all right; they had served as a pattern.