CHAPTER X.
"How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat.
To the dry grass, and the drier grain,
How welcome is the rain!"—Longfellow.
Miss Chesney, who, had she been born a man and a gardener, could have commanded any wages, is on her knees beside some green plants, busily hunting for slugs. These ravishers of baby flowers and innocent seedlings are Miss Chesney's especial abhorrence. It is in vain to tell her that they must be fed,—that they, as well as the leviathan, must have their daily food; she declines to look upon their frequent depredations in any other light than as wanton mischief.
Upon their destruction she wastes so much of her valuable time that, could there be a thought in their small, slimy, gelatinous bodies, they must look upon her as the fell destroyer of their race,—a sort of natural enemy.
She is guiltless of gloves, and, being heated in the chase, has flung her hat upon the velvet sward beside her. Whereupon the ardent sun, availing of the chance, is making desperate love to her, and is kissing with all his might her priceless complexion. It is a sight to make a town-bred damsel weep aloud!
Miss Beauchamp, sailing majestically toward this foolish maiden, with her diaphanous skirts trailing behind her, a huge hat upon her carefully arranged braids, and an enormous garden umbrella over all, looks with surprise, largely mingled with contempt, upon the kneeling figure. She marks the soft beauty of the skin, the exquisite penciling of the eyebrows, the rich color on the laughing lips, and, marking, feels some faint anger at the reckless extravagance of the owner of these unpurchasable charms.