Think, if you can, of a whole winter passing in Westchester County without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Saturday or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis out-of-doors. The balls were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of plausible weather.

It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It "came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was Saturday, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But nobody would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Saturday closing last winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of what might happen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before Wednesday, and God knows what he'll find when he gets there."

"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done all winter?"

"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "At least he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he?"

"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that I'm having served?"

"Not now, Sam—not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay just where, and as, it was; and nobody else said anything. The men wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they would buy or sell on Monday.

"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally—?"

Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base.

"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow—snow," and she began to jump up and down.

In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ashore.

"The man himself," said Sally.

"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?"

By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the boat-house.

"Captain," I said, "take the Hobo (that was the name of the motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special."

"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled."

"Not you," I said, "but the Hobo."

"Tell them," said Sally, "if they ask questions, that you were blown from your moorings, and that you couldn't get back in the teeth of the gale because—because—"

"Because," said I, "your cylinders slipped, and your clutch missed fire, and your carbureter was full of prunes."

"In other words," said Sally, "if anybody ever asks you anything about anything—lie."

We gave him a lot more instructions, and some eloquent money, and he said, "Very good, ma'am," to me, and "Very good, miss," to Sally, and pretty soon he, and the Hobo, and the engineer, and the Hobo's crew of one, and the tender were neatly blown from their moorings, and drifted helplessly toward City Island at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour. Then Sally and I (it was snowing hard, now) climbed into the loft of the boat-house, and fixed the canoe.

"There," said Sally, putting down her little hatchet, "I don't believe the most God-fearing banker in this world would put to sea in that! Well, Sam, we've done it now."

"We have," said I.

"Will Monday never come?" said Sally.

"Stop," said I; "the telephone."

Idle Island was moored to the mainland by a telephone cable. It took us nearly an hour to find where this slipped into the water. And we were tired and hungry and wet and cold, but we simply had to persevere. It was frightful. At length we found the thing—it looked like a slimy black snake—and we cut it, where the water was a foot deep—the water bit my wrists and ankles as sharply as if it had been sharks—and went back to the house through the storm.

It was as black as night (the weather, not the house), snowing furiously and howling. We crept into the house like a couple of sneak-thieves, and heard Billoo at his very loudest shouting:

"I had Morgan on the wire all right—and the fool operator cut me off!"

Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face.

"Hello, fool operator," she said.

"Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer."

"To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged.