One great cloud
did not sweep across the sky like a concentrated charge, leaving all
clear behind it, as is so often the case, but, as if from an immense
reserve, Nature appeared to send out her vapory forces by battalions.
Instead of enjoying the long siesta which she had promised herself, Amy
spent the afternoon in watching the cloud scenery. A few miles southwest
of the house was a prominent highland that happened to be in the direct
line of the successive showers. This formed a sort of gauge of their
advance. A cloud would loom up behind it, darken it, obscure it until it
faded out even as a shadow; then the nearer spurs of the mountains would
be blotted out, and in eight or ten minutes even the barn and the
adjacent groves would be but dim outlines through the myriad rain-drops.
The cloud would soon be well to the eastward, the dim landscape take form
and distinctness, and the distant highland appear again, only to be
obscured in like manner within the next half-hour. It was as if invisible
and Titanic gardeners were stepping across the country with their
watering-pots.
Burt and Webb sat near Amy at the open window, the former chatting
easily, and often gayly. Webb, with his deep-set eyes fixed on the
clouds, was comparatively silent. At last he rose somewhat abruptly, and
was not seen again until evening, when he seemed to be in unusually good
spirits. As the dusk deepened he aided Alf and Johnnie in making the
finest possible display of their fireworks, and for half an hour the
excitement was intense.
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