Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/280

268 It was two hours later when Viola started to leave the florist's. The storm was raging with all the malignant intensity of driving rain and a wind that lay in wait at corners and sprang upon the wayfarer. She made part of her journey on the electric car, but the long climb up the hill had to be accomplished on foot. About this high point the wind met few obstacles, and swept by, shouting hoarsely in the joy of its freedom.

It played with Viola like a cat with a mouse—at one moment swept her forward in a sail-like spread of skirt, at the next turned upon her, buffeting her furiously back against the streaming walls, tearing at her hat, driving the rain into her face, down her neck, up her sleeves. It seized her umbrella and whisked it this way and that, while she held its handle and helplessly followed its eccentric course. When halfway up the hill she was forced to shut it, and then, angry with her for thus terminating its sport, the wind concentrated its spiteful anger upon her.

It blew steadily in her face, except at the moments when she crossed an intersecting street, [sic] Then it seemed to blow from all points at once, seizing her and shaking her, whirling her about, throwing her against a gate or into the drenched, yielding leafage of a hedge, and then creeping up behind her and beating against her with a