Billy, who
liked to play just what was in the book, said at first that Robinson
Crusoe didn't ever have his mother with him, but he "guessed the man who
wrote the story would have put that in if he had known what larks it
was."

But one day something happened that stopped our playing _Robinson
Crusoe_ or anything else for a long time. Mother had sent Billy on an
errand a long way off, Kate Ames was sick, and Teddy had to stay at home
to amuse her, and I was in the house, in the sitting-room with mother.

The morning had been very pleasant and warm, and though I wished we were
all together in the cellar at play, I was quite contented with a book
called _Beechnut_, a Franconia story, and I was thinking that Beechnut
was almost just like Billy. Mother laid down her sewing, and went out of
the room, patting my cheek with her kind hand as she passed, to tell
Biddy something about dinner.

In a few minutes it grew so dark that I looked out of the window to see
what made it, and saw the sky covering with a big black cloud that
unrolled ever so fast, and the wind began to blow very hard, and the
trees bent and turned over the white sides of their leaves in it. If
Billy had been at home I should have gone out with him to run in the
wind, because it feels so pleasant on my cheeks and in my hair, just as
flowing water looks. It grew darker, began to rain, and the wind grew
louder, with a queer sound; but I could see to read, and I got so
interested in Beechnut that, though I saw out of the side of my eye some
one go by the window, I did not really think about it, but kept on
reading till I heard papa's voice in the next room, and heard mamma say:

"I'm so glad you're safe in the house; but where can Billy be? I sent
him to Morton's, but he ought to have been home an hour ago. It's a
perfect hurricane!"

"Oh, he'll do," said papa; "he's under cover somewhere, but--"

I couldn't hear any more, for just then the windows rattled; the floor
shook so I could hardly keep my seat. There was an awful roar of wind, a
crackling sound in the walls, a crash outside as if a load of coal were
being tumbled into the bin, and the pretty vases on the mantel fell and
broke to pieces on the floor. I ran as well as I could, and caught hold
of papa. He held mamma's hands. She was white, and looked so strange. It
frightened me more than all the rest, and I couldn't keep from crying.

"Hurricane! my dear," I heard papa say; "it's an earthquake sho