230 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
plans to drive down to the beach next morning, with a 
double team, and secure a full load of the weed for covering 
his strawberry or asparagus beds. 
Before morning, however, a driving rain set in that 
lasted for two days and kept everybody house-bound. 
The roadways ran water like rivers, and, by the time the 
storm lessened at sunset Sunday evening, there was barely 
a leaf left on the apple trees of the Birdland orchard, and 
Goldilocks was well-nigh heartbroken over the state of 
the lunch-counter, for, in spite of the protecting roof, the 
broken biscuits turned to paste, the suet hung in rags, 
and as for the kernels of cracked corn and the buck- 
wheat, they had swelled as if they thought it was a spring 
rain and it was their duty to grow. So that Goldilocks 
was worried lest some Juncos and Goldfinches that made 
a hearty meal upon the grains, in spite of the rain, should 
suffer from a fit of indigestion. 
Early Monday morning, when he returned to milk, the 
hired man at Tommy Todd’s, who had been spending the 
night with his brother at one of the little huts four miles 
below on the shore road, brought word that the great 
storm had, as he expressed it, “‘heaved”’ the deep-water 
oyster-beds that extended out through the bay and that 
in addition to the seaweed, the beach was completely 
covered with fine large oysters, bushels and bushels of 
them. 
How the news spread, nobody knew, but by half-past 
eight every available team within a mile of Foxes Corners 
school was ‘‘hooked up” and entire families were hurry- 
ing toward the beach in every sort of vehicle, to gather up 
this unexpected treasure-trove of the sea. 
