Nature had
been Maggie's handmaid in spreading that table, and art, with its
culinary mysteries and combinations, was conspicuously absent. If Eve had
had a kitchen range and the Garden of Eden to draw upon, Adam could
scarcely have fared better than did the Clifford household that day. The
dishes heaped with strawberries, raspberries, cherries, and white
grape-currants that had been gathered with the dew upon them might well
tempt the most _blase_ resident of a town to man's primal calling.
Before they reached their iced tea, which on this hot day took the place
of coffee, there was a distant peal of thunder.
"I knew it would come," said old Mr. Clifford. "We shall have a cool
night, after all."
"A Fourth rarely passes without showers," Leonard remarked. "That's why I
was so strenuous about getting all our grass and grain that was down
under cover yesterday."
"You are not the only prudent one," Maggie added, complacently. "I've
made my currant jelly, and it jellied beautifully: it always does if I
make it before the Fourth and the showers that come about this time. It's
queer, but a rain on the currants after they are fairly ripe almost
spoils them for jelly."
The anticipations raised by the extreme sultriness were fulfilled at
first only in part. Instead of a heavy shower accompanied by violent
gusts, there was a succession of tropical and vertical down-pourings,
with now and then a sharp flash and a rattling peal, but usually a heavy
monotone of thunder from bolts flying in the distance.
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