It was raining. It had begun to rain the afternoon before; it had rained all night, with the drizzling, sozzling kind of rain that indicated persistence. It had rained all the morning; it was obviously going to rain all day. The hollow beside the stone hitching-post, where the grocer\'s horse and the butcher\'s horse and the fishman\'s horse had stamped, all through the drought, was now a pool of brown water, with the raindrops making gooseflesh on it. There was another pond under the front gate, and another under the hammock; and the middle of the road, in the horse rut, was a narrow brown brook. The tiger lilies in the old stump were bending with their load of wetness, the phlox in the garden was weighed down till its white masses nearly touched earth. Indoors, when the wind lulled and the rain fell straighter, we could hear the drops tick-tick-ticking on the bark of[Pg 140] the birch logs in the fireplace. This flue of the chimney is almost vertical, with a slant to the southward, and I have always liked the way it lets in samples of the weather—a patch of yellow sunshine on clear days, a blur of soft white light on gray ones, and on stormy ones flicks of rain to make the fire sputter, or, as on this particular day, to dampen our kindling if it has been laid ready to light.

The belated postman\'s buggy, with presumably a postman inside it somewhere behind the sheathing of black rubber, drove up, our mail-box grated open and shut, and the streaming horse sloshed on. Jonathan turned up his collar and dashed out to the box, and dashed in again, bringing with him a great gust of rainy sweetness and the smell of wet woolen.

"Jonathan," I said, "let\'s take a walk."

He was unfolding the damp newspaper carefully so as not to tear it. "What\'s that? Walk?"

"That\'s what I said."

He had his paper open by this time, and was glancing at the headlines. When a man[Pg 141] is glancing at headlines, it is just as well to let him glance. I gave him fifteen minutes. Then I reopened the matter.

"Jonathan, I said walk."

"What\'s that?" His tone was vague. It was what I call his newspaper tone. It suggests extreme remoteness, but tolerance, even benevolence, if he is let alone. He drifted slowly over to the window and made a pretense of looking out, but his eyes were still running down the columns. "My dear," he remarked, still in the same tone, "had you noticed that it is beginning to rain?"

"I noticed that yesterday afternoon, about three o\'clock," I said.

"Oh, all right. I thought perhaps you hadn\'t."

"Well?" I waited.

"Well—" he hung fire while he finished the tail of the editorial. Then he threw down the paper. "Don\'t you think it\'s rather poor weather for walking?"

This was what I had been waiting for, and I responded glibly, "Some one has said there is no such thing as bad weather, there are only good clothes."[Pg 142]

"Do you mean mine?" He grinned down at his farm regimentals.

"Well, then—"

"Why, of course, if you really mean it," he said, and added, as he looked out reflectively at the puddling road, "You\'ll get your hair wet."

"Hope so! Now, Jonathan, aren\'t you silly, really? Anybody would think we\'d never been for a walk in the rain before in our lives. Perhaps you\'d rather stay indoors and be a tabby-cat and keep dry."

"Who got the mail?"

"You did. But you wanted the paper—and you ran."

The fact was, as I very well knew, Jonathan really wanted to go, but he didn\'t want to start. When people really enjoy doing a thing, and mean to do it, and yet won\'t get going, something has to be done to get them going. That was why I spoke of tabby-cats.

Jonathan assumed an alert society tone. "I should enjoy a walk very much, thank you," he said; "the weather seems to me perfect. But," he added abruptly, "wear woolen; that white thing won\'t do.">[Pg 143]

"Of course!" I went off and made myself fit—woolen for warmth, though the day was not cold, a short khaki skirt, an old felt hat, and old shoes. Out we went into the drenched world. Whish! A gust of rain in my eyes half blinded me, and I ran under the big maples. I heard Jonathan chuckle. "I can\'t help it," I gasped; "I\'ll be wet enough in a few minutes, and then I shan\'t care."

From the maples I made for the lee of the barn eaves, disturbing the hens who were sulking there. They stepped ostentatiously out into the rainy barnyard with an air of pointedly not noticing me, but of knowing all the time whose fault it was. They weren\'t liking the weather, anyhow, the hens weren\'t, and showed it plainly in the wet, streaky droop of their feathers and the exasperated look in their red eyes. "Those hens look as if they thought I could do something about it if I only would," I said to Jonathan as we passed them.

"Yes, they aren\'t a cordial crowd. Here, we\'ll show them how to take weather!"

We were passing under an apple tree; Jonathan[Pg 144] seized a drooping bough, and a sheet of water shook itself out on our shoulders. I gasped and ducked, and a hen who stood too near scuttered off with low duckings of indignation.

"Now you\'re really wet, you can enjoy yourself," said Jonathan; and there was something in it, though I was loath to admit it at the moment. A moment before I had felt rather appalled at the sight of the rain-swept lane; now I hastened on recklessly.

"I think," said Jonathan, "it\'s the back of my neck that counts. After that\'s wet I don\'t care what happens."

"Yes," I agreed, "that\'s a stronghold. But I think with me it\'s my shoulders."

It did not really matter which it was; neck and shoulders both were wet,—back, arms, everything. We tramped down across the hollow, over the brook, whose flood was backing up into the swamp on each side. I paused to look off across the huckleberry hillside beyond.

"How the rain changes everything!" I said.

All the colors had freshened and darkened, and the blur of the rain softened the picture[Pg 145] and "brought it together," as the painters say.

"Well," said Jonathan, "woods or open?"

"Which is the wettest?"

"Woods."

"Then woods."

And we plunged in under the big chestnuts, through a mass of witch-hazel and birch.

Jonathan was quite right. Woods were the wettest. One can hardly fancy anything quite so wet. Solid water, like a river, is not comparable, because it is all in one lump; you know where it is, and you can get out of it when you want to. But here in the woods the water was everywhere, ready to hurl itself upon us, from above, from beside us, from below. Every step, every motion, drew upon us drenching showers of great drops that had been hanging heavily in the leaves ready to break away at a touch. Little streamlets of water ran from the drooping edges of my hat and from my chin, water dashed in my eyes and I blinked it out.

Jonathan, pausing to hold back a dripping spray of blackberry, heavy with fruit, remarked, "Aren\'t you getting a little damp?"[Pg 146]

"I wonder if I am!" I answered joyously, and plunged on into the next thicket.

There is as much exhilaration in being out in a big rain and getting really rained through, as there is in being out in surf. It has nothing in common with the sensations that arise when, umbrellaed and mackintoshed and rubber-overshoed, we pick our way gingerly along the street, wondering how much we can keep dry, hoping everything is "up" all round, wishing the wind wouldn\'t keep changing and blowing the umbrella so, and fancying how we shall look when we "get there." But when you don\'t care—when you want to get wet, and do—there is a physical glow that is delightful, a sense of being washed through and through, of losing one\'s identity almost, and being washed away into the great swirl of nature where one doesn\'t count much, but is glad to be taken in as a part. I fancy this is true with any of the elements—earth, ............