And tightly closed the door.”
Alas for the best-laid plans of children, mice, and maiden aunties! Even in Providence (though only forty miles from Boston) the sun does not always shine, and so it was that the first sounds that greeted the waking ears of the little folk in the Funny house on Funny street, were the patter, patter, on the window panes, drip, drip, from the house eaves,
“The splashing, dashing,
Hurrying, skurrying,”
of the stream of water, which, starting from College Hill, plunges down Funny street in its mad race to empty itself into the river basin, before its hundred fellow-streams should outstrip it.
“Why didn’t this rain put in an appearance yesterday, I should like to know? Of all the dry, poky days in a boy’s life, I do think a rainy day is just the dryest. Why couldn’t we have had a rainy Sunday and done with it?” petulantly demanded the Keeper, and even the wisdom of the Owl failed to find answer.
The Keeper’s state of mind was not favorable to the peace and well-being of the little animals in his care, and he hid Bear’s stockings, flung the soapy sponge into Jacko’s eyes, and interrupted Rosie’s eighty times of
“Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never, never, come again;”
which was sure to bring sunshine, till at last Charlotte’s patience was quite exhausted, so Papa was appealed to, and the Keeper summoned to sit in the Library corner a full hour, without even a book to relieve the tiresomeness; but when Papa’s morning visit to the nursery revealed the fact that the same mischievous spirit had thickly powdered the children’s strawberries, and flavored their goblets of milk with salt, Master Keeper was sentenced to solitary confinement in his own room, and in order to confuse the plans of the Evil Spirit,