And then he murmured to himself, “Anne Lavender-Winks. How right I was about that!”
A VOYAGE TO INDIA
RAINING, still raining! Oh dear, oh dear! But what, you say to yourself, is a little rain? Jane Ann must be patient. She must stay at home and play with her delightful toys this afternoon, and then perhaps to-morrow morning the sun will come out, and she will be able to run about in the fields again. After all, it isn’t every little girl who has a rabbit, and a horse and cart, and an india-rubber ball to play with. Come, come, Jane Ann!
How little you understand!
To-day was the day. To-morrow will be too late. Perhaps even now if it cleared up—but each time that she has said this, down has come another cloud. She tried shutting her eyes; she did try that. She tried shutting her eyes and saying, “One, two, three, four—I’ll count twenty and then I’ll open them, and please, will you let the rain stop by then, please, because it’s too terribly important, you know why.” Yes, she counted twenty; quickly up to twelve, and then more slowly to fifteen, and then sixteen ... seventeen ... eighteen ... nineteen ... and then, so slowly that it wasn’t really fair, but she wanted to make it easier for God, twe ... twe ... twe ... TWENTY! But it went on raining. She tried holding her breath; she said that if she held her breath a very long time, longer than anyone in the whole world had ever held it before, then when she stopped holding it, it would stop raining. Wouldn’t it? But it didn’t. So she stood at the window and watched the raindrops sliding down the pane; and she said—and she knew this would do it—that if this raindrop got to the bottom of the pane before the other, then it would stop raining, but that if the other one did, then it wouldn’t stop ... and when they were half-way down, she said, No, it was the other way about, and if this one got there last, then.... But still it went on raining.
You see, it was the day she was going to India. Her Father and Mother lived in India, and she remembered them quite well. At first she remembered they were black, because all Indians were black, and then when Aunt Mary told her they were white, she remembered how white they were. She was to live with Aunt Mary until they came home, which was next year, and sometimes she got tired of waiting.
“Couldn’t they come to-morrow?” she asked.