“I do hope we see him this time!” said Marcia. “Maybe he’ll fall.”

“This one never wants to miss anything,” laughed their mother, tweaking Marcia’s ear.

As soon as they were back in the surrey, Florrie still sleeping, Papa picked up the whip and they started off very fast. No one said anything, for their father’s anger had spread around them like a frost. Something had happened that they did not understand and it was somehow Mama’s fault. Presently they were in the country again, with the sweet, dull smell of hay, then the damp mossy breeze from the deep woods and hidden frog ponds. Their father put his arm around their mother. She began to laugh, rubbing her head against his cheek.

“Oh, Harry, you kill me!” she chuckled. “The Furness house! Why not Buckingham Palace?”

“All right, Buckingham Palace,” agreed their father, laughing reluctantly. “You don’t think I mean what I say, Daisy. It makes me mad when you won’t believe me. You never think I can do the things I say, but you wait.”

“But you won’t go on the road, darling,” pleaded their mother. “You said you’d take any other job rather than leave me.”

“I said I wouldn’t go on the road,” their father shouted. “All right, if I said I wouldn’t, then I won’t. That’s all there is to that.”

Above, the skies darkened suddenly as if a lantern had blown out. A wind blew up, rattling the storm curtains warningly. Clouds as black as midnight rode over the horizon and the baby began to cry loudly. They stopped to put up the storm curtains, but the wind whipped them into their father’s face as fast as he buttoned them. Lightning flashed and the horse whinnied in terror. Both the girls were scared but their mother told them to hush. She held the baby tight but it still wept lustily; the horse threw up its head and galloped wildly down the road into the gathering storm. It was barely three o’clock but the earth was drenched in darkness. As they dashed by the farms, horses whinnied, dogs barked, cocks crowed, bells rang in the wind, voices cried out in the fields.

“We can make the edge of town, I think,” shouted their father.

“Look!” cried their mother.

When they looked they saw a dark object drifting across the sky like a bat across the ceiling.

“The balloon! The man in the balloon!” exclaimed their mother.

Marcia and Lena, arms tight around each other, looked upward, frightened and fascinated while the balloon drifted slowly downward, barely missing a barn cupola. They could see a dark figure outlined in the ship, a fairy-tale monster, omen of thunder and darkness and nightmares to come. The lightning sprang behind it like hellfire from the Bible pictures, and the horse reared. It was like that picture in their old dining room of three horses and night lightning. The children stared helplessly, filled with sick loneliness and fear, as if the creature flying up there had brought the clouds and lightning and the blight to their perfect day, and no one, not even a father and mother, could stop his wicked vengeance.