And then it rained.
Justin yawned and fidgeted about the room, and settled down to a book and shut it up again with a bang and sent it skating across the polished table. He wanted to go out.... He had nothing to do.... Vacation was rather a bore sometimes.... He wondered if he should get out his stamps.... He hadn’t looked at his stamps lately.... Stamps were rather a bore.... He yawned again.
“‘Rain, rain, go to Spain,’” chanted Laura, drumming on the glass. She was kneeling on the window-seat, looking out at the wall of wet leafage that faced her across the lawn, for the garden had been hung on the breast of deep woods. Mrs. Cloud complained that the trees darkened the house and made it damp, and Justin would offer to have them thinned, and then Mrs. Cloud would talk hurriedly about central heating, and Justin would laugh at her; because his mother had never yet been known to sanction the destruction of an acorn. She had the characteristic passion of a shy woman for trees—for the quiet, deep-rooted trees that shelter and enclose.
“‘Rain, rain——’” began Laura again, energetically.
“Oh, stow it, Laura!” grunted Justin.
But the rain, either because, like any one else, it hates to hear its name shouted after it, or because it had been at work since seven and it was now close upon eleven o’clock, did suddenly slacken and waver in a half-hearted and apologetic fashion that was most encouraging.
“It’s stopping! It’s going! You see in five minutes! I knew it would, or the birds wouldn’t make such a row. Look at them on the lawn, Justin.” She thrust her open palms out of the window to feel the weather. “It is stopping.”
“Oh, by the way, that reminds me,” Justin brightened. “Let’s have a look at the birds’ eggs. Haven’t seen ’em for years.” And he took the key of the fat little cabinet from a reluctant Laura. But he did not notice her reluctance. “Ever heard of Bellew?”
“British Feather Folk?” Laura glanced up at a row of maroon volumes.
“Yes.” Then, as he wrenched at a stiff drawer: “I say, you can’t have dusted here lately.”