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She rattled on, hoping to conceal the laughter of the children next door—a favorite source of querulousness at breakfast time.

“Listen to me! ‘A rural disaster.’ Oh, I’ve hit on something sad. But never mind.’Last Tuesday at Plataniste, in the province of Messenia, a shocking tragedy occurred. A large tree’—aren’t I getting on well?— ‘blew down in the night and’—wait a minute—oh, dear! ‘crushed to death the five occupants of the little Khan there, who had apparently been sitting in the balcony. The bodies of Maria Rhomaides, the aged proprietress, and of her daughter, aged forty-six, were easily recognizable, whereas that of her grandson’—oh, the rest is really too horrid; I wish I had never tried it, and what’s more I feel to have heard the name Plataniste before. We didn’t stop there, did we, in the spring?”

“We had lunch,” said Mr. Lucas, with a faint expression of trouble on his vacant face.”Perhaps it was where the dragoman bought the pig.”

“Of course,” said Ethel in a nervous voice.”Where the dragoman bought the little pig. How terrible!”

“Very terrible!” said her father, whose attention was wandering to the noisy children next door. Ethel suddenly started to her feet with genuine interest.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed.”This is an old paper. It happened not lately but in April—the night of Tuesday the eighteenth—and we— we must have been there in the afternoon.”

“So we were,” said Mr. Lucas. She put her hand to her heart, scarcely able to speak.

“Father, dear father, I must say it: you wanted to stop there. All those people, those poor half savage people, tried to keep you, they’re dead. The whole place, it says, is in ruins, and even the stream has changed its course. Father, dear, if it had not been for me, and if Arthur had not helped me, you must have been killed.”

Mr. Lucas waved his hand irritably.”It is not a bit of good speaking to the governess, I shall write to the landlord and say, ‘The reason I am giving up the house is this: the dog barks, the children next door are intolerable, and I cannot stand the noise of running water.’ “

Ethel did not check his babbling. She was aghast at the narrowness of the escape, and for a long time kept silence. At last she said: “Such a marvelous deliver
ance does make one believe in Providence.”

Mr. Lucas, who was still composing his letter to the landlord, did not reply.

1911