Page:The land of many names (1926).pdf/22

 clatter and the clock came to a sudden standstill, and now it won’t go. Oh, this must be some sign; it came into my head right away that someone had died. It might be father-in-law; he’s got one foot in the grave, anyhow—or maybe uncle, or perhaps even my second cousin.



Oh, we had a worse time than that. I quite thought my last hour had come. You know, I’m so frightened of storms. My heart goes bump and I get all out of breath, my breathing’s still so bad from my last illness; nobody’d believe what I go through. I had to hide my head under the bedclothes so as not to hear. And the bedstead kept rocking with me in it



Goodness gracious, my dear! and what about me? I’m that nervous, you know, ever since my second confinement, all the doctors gave me up. When that rumbling began, I said to my husband: “What’s that you’re doing?” And he said: “Me? Nothing. I know nothing about it.” I was that afraid, as if I was turned to stone.



And me! When the storm began, there was a sort of rattling in my inside, and my stomach felt as if someone run a log of wood into me. My throat went all tight and I couldn’t utter a single word. At that moment my eyes were starting out of my head and I was as white as—as—a sheet. What doings



There was a rattling and the earth was all of a