Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/79

 intervals, and the sharp-edged gravel driven before the gale cut like tiny knives.

Any daring chicken that ventured from its coop slid away as if it wete on skates. Pitchforks were useless, and those who had horses to feed carried the hay in sacks. The caged inhabitants stood at their windows and made caustic comments upon the legs and general contour of such unfortunates as necessity took out, while those pedestrians who would converse, upon catching sight of each other made a dive for the nearest telephone pole. There, clinging by an arm like a shipwrecked sailor to a mast, they ventured to opine that it must be ** getting ready for something." It seemed as though the earth would soon be denuded of its soil, leaving the rocks exposed like a skeleton stripped of its flesh. Yet, day after day, it blew without respite, and the effect of it upon different temperaments was as varied as that of drink.

No one could seem to remember that the wind had not always blown, or realize that it would sometime stop. No character was strong enough to maintain a perfect equilibrium after three days of it. Logic or philosophy made no more impression upon the mental state than water slipping over a rock. It set the nerves on edge. Irritation, restlessness and discontent were as uncontrolla- ble as great fear. Two wildcats tied together were not more incompatible than husbands and wives, who under normal conditions lived together happily. Doting moth- ers became shrews ; fond fathers, brutes, lambasting their offspring on the smallest pretext; while seven was too conservative an estimate to place upon the devils of which the children who turned the house into Bedlam seemed to be possessed.

Optimists grew green with melancholia, pessimists con-