Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/43

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THE CAVE ON THUNDER CLOUD
35

about her with a sneer. "I don't think much of your cave," she said. "It's little and it's dirty."

"It's dry!' said Tish tartly.

"Why stop at all?" Aggie asked sarcastically. "Why not just have kept on? We couldn't get any wetter."

"Yes," I added, "between flowering hedgerows! And of course these spring rains give nobody cold!"

Tish did not say a word. She took off her shoes and her skirt, got her sleeping-bag off Modestine's back, and—went to bed with the worst attack of neuralgia she had ever had.

That was on Wednesday, late in the afternoon.

It rained for two days!

We built a fire out of the wood that was in the cave, and dried out our clothes, and heated stones to put against Tish's right eye, and brought in wet branches to dry against the time when we should need them. Aggie sneezed incessantly in the smoke, and Tish groaned in her corner. I was about crazy. On Thursday, when the edge of the neuralgia was gone, Tish promised to go home the moment the rain stopped and the roads dried. Aggie and I went to her together and implored her.

But, as it turned out, we did not go home for some days, and when we did——