II.
THE RAINS.
“And the rain it raineth every day.”
Twelfth Night.
FOR many weeks there had been nothing doing, — a piping time of heat, when the sun and the moon divided the twenty-four hours between them. But all that has been changed, and on Monday came the rain. At first only wind. But I had heard the jack-tree whispering of what was coming, and among the plantains I saw that there was a secret hatching — and then on a sudden came the strong gust, rain-heralding. The wind came sweeping up, clearing the way for the rain that was close behind, and then the rain, on the earth that was gasping for it, descended in great, round, solemn drops.
And how suddenly did all nature become aware of the change! The grateful earth sent up in quick response its thanks in a scent as fragrant to us in India as is the glorious bouquet of the hay-fields at home. The joyous birds flitted here and there, hymning the bursting of the monsoon, and all the dusty trees broke out into laughing green. The swallow came down from the clouds to hawk among the shrubs, for a strange insect world was abroad, the sudden rain having startled into uncustomary daylight the night-loving moth and the feeble swarm that peoples the crepuscule. The young parrots, insolent
