"The Empire," they both screamed, and after the immoderate laughter had ceased I declared I wouldn't go on.
We refilled our pipes, but Tudway grew horribly silent. After a long time we chaffed him about the Sumana, and offered him a kabob for his thoughts.
"Ah!" he said, "it was that limb. It recalled——" Then he stopped and actually reddened; and nothing would induce him to go on.
That set us all thinking.
We both retired to bed, and with one eye I finished the story. It is quite a good one, and tells you many other things about the call of the rain. That reminded me of an evening years ago in far-away New Zealand, when in the heart of the great silences I looked through my tent door and saw the rain on the wild river and great forests and distant mountains....
Well, I read with my half-shut eyes by the flickering dubbin tin that gave a small and ever-dwindling light, and although my eyes burned and jumped I read through to the end. And in the end Robert Chambers married them after all—those two young and ardent spirits, and together, no doubt, they looked at the night waves, and the snow on the wintry trees and at the distant stars, and heard the whisper of sweetness ineffable, the inarticulate music of the call of the rain.
And facing that last page was a bold advertisement and the picture of "Our extra guest folding bedstead—folds quite flat when not in use!"
That also was a human note, and how real! It invites us to view the deserted stage, the drabs of colour with grey torn canvas, the ghostly framework of the scenes, the tinsel robes and stifled flowers.
"Folds quite flat when not in use"—which will be quite often, as we have not many friends....
and a tiny little boy
With hey ho, the wind and the rain!
A foolish thing was but a toy
For the rain it raineth every day....