He had listened somewhat indulgently to the story of the three Alixes.
The old man, prompted and sometimes disputed by other members of
the family, had narrated in his own simple way the foregoing tale,
arriving at the end in a far more expeditious and certainly in a
less studied manner than the present chronicler employs in putting
the facts before his readers. The night was hot. He was occasionally
interrupted by various members of the little group on the front
porch of the big old farmhouse, the interruption invariably taking
the form of a conjecture concerning the significance of certain
signs ordinarily infallible in denoting the approach of rain. Heat
lightning had been playing for an hour or more in the gloomy west;
a tree-toad in a nearby elm was prophesying thunder in unmelodious
song: night-birds fluttered restlessly among the lofty branches;
widely separated whiffs of a freshening wind came around the corner
of the house. All of these had a barometric meaning to the wistful
group. There was a thunderstorm on the way. It was sure to come
before morning. The prayers inaugurated a month ago were at last
to be answered.
As old man Brown drily remarked: "There's one satisfaction about
prayin' for rain. If you keep at it long enough, you're bound to
get what you're askin' for. Works the same way when you're prayin'
for it to stop rainin'.
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