Page:Daskam Bacon--Whom the gods destroy.djvu/49

 in! Why, Mr. Willard, you'd never think it to look at her, for she's a real quiet girl—too quiet, seems to me, sometimes, when I'm just put to it for somebody to be social with—but in thet big gale of eighty-eight she was out all night in it, and me and her father—that was before Mr. Storrs died—nearly crazy with fearin' she was lost for good. And when she was six years old, she got up from her crib and went out on the beach In her little nightgown, and nothin' else, and it's a miracle she didn't die of pneumonia, if not of bein' blown to death."

Mrs. Storrs stopped for breath, and Willard glanced at the girl, wondering if she would appear disconcerted or angry at such unlooked-for revelation of her eccentricity; but her face had settled Into its usual impassive lines, and she dusted the chairs serenely, turning now and then to look fixedly through the window at the swaying elm whose boughs leaned to the ground under the still rising wind.

Her mother was evidently relieving the strain of an enforced silence, and sitting stiffly in her