Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/349

 fiantly. “Somebody frew me; you didn’t frow me; so it was God.”

“No, it wasn’t. You fell because you let go of my hand and bent too far forward. I told you not to do that. So that it was your own fault.”

Jims looked to see if she meant it; then glanced up at the sky again. l

“Excuse me, then, God,” he remarked airily.

Rilla scanned the sky also; she did not like its appearance; a heavy thundercloud was rising in the north-west. What in the world was to be done? There was no other train that night, since the nine o'clock special ran only on Saturdays. Would it be possible for them to reach Hannah Brewster's house, two miles away, before the storm broke? Rilla thought she could do it alone easily enough, but with Jims it was another matter. Were his little legs good for it?

“We've got to try it,” said Rilla desperately. “We might stay in the siding until the thunderstorm is over; but it may keep on raining all night and anyway it will be pitch dark. If we can get to Hannah’s she will keep us all night.”

Hannah Brewster, when she had been Hannah Crawford, had lived in the Glen and gone to school with Rilla. They had been good friends then, though Hannah had been three years the older. She had married very young and had gone to live in Millward. What with hard work and babies and a ne’er-do-weel husband, her life had not been an easy one, and Hannah seldom revisited her old home. Rilla had visited her once soon after her marriage, but had not seen