beside them, too young to be frightened but with her sister's
fright beginning to communicate itself to her, said, "Ask father
to go and stop it."

"Fool!" cried Flora. "How could father stop the storm?"

Why not?






CHAPTER II





Flora's sharp and astounding reply to that question of Rosalie's
was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt surprise at Flora's sharpness
and ignorance, when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man
who could, and actually did, stop a storm. This was a man called
Prospero in a book called "The Tempest."

She was never--that Rosalie--the conventional wonder-child of
fiction who reads before ten all that its author probably never
read before thirty; but she could read when she was six and she
read widely and curiously, choosing her entertainment, from her
father's bookshelves, solely by the method of reading every book