o the garden at last to see how the flowers
were faring. The sunshine was more unreal than ever, and sudden,
fitful gusts of wind were beginning to stir the trees. They had
inspected the flowers and were halfway across the lawn on their way to
the house when the sun vanished, the wind rose to a roar, and, before
they could reach the steps, the blinding rain was upon them.

It was not an ordinary thunderstorm, but one of those sinister
tempests that occasionally break the tension of a hot summer day.
Oliver, inside the hastily closed windows, could see the trees lashing
helplessly, and could hear them groaning and snapping as one great
branch after another came crashing to the ground. It was only a few
minutes that the furious wind lasted, as it swept across the garden,
but it left destruction in its wake. The beds of lilies were drenched
and flattened, the smooth lawn was strewn with twigs and broken
boughs, half a dozen trees were split, and one huge Lombardy poplar,
with a mass of earth and roots turned upward, lay prone across the
driveway.

It was half past six by Oliver's watch, then seven, then eight. No one
had come home. Cousin Jasper was growing more and more restless and
overwrought, Oliver was anxious--and hungry. He saw his cousin gather
up the fragments of the letter, piece them together for rereading,
then fling them from him once more. The boy wandered about aimlessly
in the solitude of the big house, wishing that this long miserable day
would reach an end and that Janet and Mrs. Brown would come home. It
grew dark and no one returned, although, after a long time, the
telephone began to ring.

It was Mrs. Brown's voice, nervous and only half audible, that sounded
at the far end. Yes, she and Miss Janet were quite safe, they had been
under shelter during the storm, but there had been such damage by the
wind that both the railway and the road were blocked. They would not
be able to get home for some hours, she feared.

"Could you, Mr. Oliver, just slip down to the kitchen and make poor
Mr. Peyton a cup of tea and some toast? It is so bad for him to wait
so late for his dinner. You will find the tea in the right-hand
cupboard and the butter----"

The unsatisfactory connection cut her off, leaving Oliver standing
aghast at her suggestion. "Just slip down to the kitchen," indeed,
when he did not even know the way to that region of the house. And
make tea! It seemed an utterly impossible task.

Through