Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/189

 own son Neil was frozen to death in the Klondyke. Seems as if her feelings were frozen then, too—she’s been a little mad ever since. won’t worry none over this—she’ll just smile and tell you she spanked the King.”

Both women laughed. Emily, with the story-teller’s nose, scented a story instantly, but though she would fain have lingered to hunt it down Ilse hustled her away.

“We get on, Emily, or we'll never reach St. Clair before night.”

They soon realised that they were not going to reach it. At sunset St. Clair was still three miles away and there was every indication of a wild evening.

“We can’t get to St. Clair, that’s certain,” said Ilse. “It’s going to settle down for a steady rain and it’ll be as black as a million black cats in a quarter of an hour. We'd better go to that house over there and ask if we can stay all night. It looks snug and respectable—though it certainly is the jumping-off place.”

The house at which Ilse pointed—an old whitewashed house with a grey roof—was set on the face of a hill amid bright green fields of clover aftermath. A wet red road wound up the hill to it. A thick grove of spruces shut it off from the gulf shore, and beyond the grove a tiny dip in the land revealed a triangular glimpse of misty, white-capped, grey sea. The near brook valley was filled with young spruces, dark-green in the rain. The grey clouds hung heavily over it. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds in the west for one magical moment. The hill of clover meadows flashed instantly into incredibly vivid green. The triangle of sea shimmered into violet. The old house gleamed like white marble against the emerald of its hilly background, and the inky black sky over and around it.

“Oh,” gasped Emily, “I never saw anything so wonderful!”

She groped wildly in her bag and clutched her Jimmy-book. The post of a field-gate served as a desk—Emily licked a stubborn pencil and wrote feverishly. Ilse