‘But I want to go out and dig in the sand,’ said Alice.
‘And so do I,’ said Beatrice.
Mary took no further notice of the children’s words; but when they were at breakfast, Alice said, ‘Grandmamma, is it not very tiresome that the rain is come to-day? We cannot go out. I wish that it would never rain.’
‘Nasty rain,’ said Beatrice; ‘I can’t bear the rain!’
‘You must not say that the rain is nasty, for it does a great deal of good, dear children. God sends us the rain when we want it, and we thank God for it.’
‘Why do you thank God, grandmamma,’ asked Alice, ‘for the rain? What good can the rain do?’
‘It makes the grass grow; and horses, cows, and sheep, and all other animals that eat grass, live upon it; and the rain makes the corn grow, and from corn we make our bread; and what would you or I do, or any one else, if the corn did not grow and we had no bread? The rain makes the trees and the flowers grow, and all the fruit too, and my little girls would be sorry if there were no fruit.’
‘Yes, indeed, grandmamma,’ cried both children.
‘But I thought,’ said Alice, ‘that the sun made the fruit ripe.’
‘Yes, so it does; but the sun alone could not make the plants grow, and the rain alone could not make the flowers open their leaves, or the fruit or the corn get ripe. We want both sun and rain, and we must thank God that He gives us enough of each to do good on earth.’