Grandmother in her wooden tub.
“Grandmother Marianne,” he called to her, “why do you call the river your son?”
“Look at me, Philippe. Have I not changed?” asked Grandmother. “I am no longer Grandmother Marianne,” she said, “I am Grandmother Rain!... Without me there would be no puddles, no pools, no lakes, no ponds, no rills and runs and rivulets, no brooks and streams, no waterfalls, no rivers—their lovely and happy voices would die from the land. They are all my children. And if it were not for my children, there would be no ocean.”
“What is the ocean?” asked Philippe, who had never been to the seashore.
“That, my Philippe,” said Grandmother Rain, “is where I was born, and where all my children return. It is a beautiful place! And how your uncle loves to play there—a decidedly worthy man, your uncle, though at times a trifle flighty.”
They passed a grove of trees, their bright branches reaching out over the water.
“How fresh and strong they look,” cried Grandmother Rain. “They are always glad to see me, I can assure you. Oh, I have strange adventures, Philippe. Sometimes I am buried in the soft, brown earth, and you would think that would be the end of me, now wouldn’t you? But no! I creep back into the air through trunks of trees, through blades of grass and stalks of flowers, and through the shoots of young corn. I trickle through an endless maze of underground passages into deep wells, or until I find a place where I can come bubbling up to the surface. Every living thing needs me and every living thing loves me, except sometimes little boys kept in from play—eh?”
Philippe felt guilty, and was about to apologize when Grandmother Rain put him at rest. “That is not quite true. There are others,” she said, “who do a good deal of complaining about me; they say that I am an old spoil-sport just because I try to make myself pleasant at their parties and picnics. But if I were to leave them forever——” she made an odd little gesture of despair. “Would you like me to sing you a song?” she asked unexpectedly. “It might serve to pass the time.”
“Please,” said Philippe, who was getting a bit tired of floating aimlessly and never arriving anywhere.