back again, quite to themselves, when the Mrs.
Stephens or the Mrs. Johns leave them alone for a little.

At any rate, Grandfather Holabird sat with father on the north piazza,
out of the way of the strong south-wind; and he had out a big wallet,
and a great many papers, and he stayed and stayed, from just after
dinner-time till almost the middle of the afternoon, so that father
did not go down to his office at all; and when old Mr. Holabird went
home at last, he walked over with him. Just after they had gone Leslie
Goldthwaite and Harry stopped, "for a minute only," they said; for the
south-wind had brought up clouds, and there was rain threatening. That
was how we all happened to be just as we were that night of the
September gale; for it was the September gale of last year that was
coming.

The wind had been queer, in gusts, all day; yet the weather had been
soft and mild. We had opened windows for the pleasant air, and shut
them again in a hurry when the papers blew about, and the pictures
swung to and fro against the walls. Once that afternoon, somebody had
left doors open through the brown room and the dining-room, where a
window was thrown up, as we could have it there where the three were
all on one side. Ruth was coming down stairs, and saw grandfather's
papers give a whirl out of his lap and across the piazza floor upon
the gravel. If she had not sprung so quickly and gathered them all up
for him, some of them might have blown quite away, and led father a
chase after them over the hill. After that, old Mr. Holabird put them
up in his wallet again, and when they had talked a few minutes more
they went off together to the old house.

[Illustration]

It was wonderful how that wind and rain did come up. The few minutes
that Harry and Leslie stopped with us, and then the few more they took
to consider whether it would do for Leslie to try to walk home, just
settled it that nobody could stir until there should be some sort of
lull or holding up.

Out of the far southerly hills came the blast, rending and crashing;
the first swirls of rain that flung themselves against our windows
seemed as if they might have rushed ten miles, horizontally, before
they got a chance to drop; the trees bent down and sprang again, and
lashed the air to and fro; chips and leaves and fragments of all
strange sorts took the wonderful opportunity and went soaring aloft
and onward in a false, plebeian triumph.

The rain came harder,