XXI.
UNCLE RAIN AND BROTHER DROUTH.
“Now I’m not so mighty certain that that is a real tale after all,” said Mr. Rabbit, “although it took two to tell it. There’s something the matter with it somewhere. The running-gear is out of order. I’m not complaining, because what might suit me might not suit other people. It’s all a matter of taste, as Mrs. Meadows’s grandmother said when she wiped her mouth with her apron and kissed the cow.”
“Well,” remarked Mr. Thimblefinger, “there’s no telling what happens in a Looking-glass when nobody is watching. I’ve often wanted to know. The little that I’ve heard about the Woog and the Weeze will do me until I can hear more.”
“I remember a story that I thought was a very good one when I first heard it,” said Mrs. Meadows. “But sometimes a great deal more depends on the time, place, and company than on the stories that are told. I’m such a poor hand at telling tales that I’m almost afraid to tell any that I know. I’ve heard a great many in my day and time, but the trouble is to pick out them that don’t depend on a wink of the eye and a wave of the hand.”
“Give us a taste of it, anyhow,” suggested Mr. Rabbit. “I’ll do the winking, the Tar-Baby can do the blinking, and Mr. Thimblefinger can wave his hands.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Meadows, “once upon a time there lived in a country not very far from here a man who had a wife and two children,—a boy and a girl. This was not a large family, but the man was very poor, and he found it a hard matter to get along. He was a farmer, and farming, no matter what they say, depends almost entirely on the weather. Now, this farmer never could get the weather he wanted. One year the Rain would come and drown out his crops, and the next year the Drouth would come and burn them up.
“Matters went from bad to worse, and the farmer and his wife talked of nothing else but the Rain and the Drouth. One year they said they would have made a living but for the Drouth, and the next they said they would have been very well off but for the Rain. So it went on from year to year until the two children,—the boy and the girl,—grew up large enough to understand what their father and mother were talking about. One year they’d hear they could have no Sunday clothes and shoes because of the Drouth. The next year they’d hear they could have no shoes and Sunday clothes because of the Rain.
“All this set them to thinking. The boy was about ten years old and the girl was about nine. One day at their play they began to talk as they had heard their father and mother talk. It was early in the spring, and their father was even then ploughing and preparing his fields for planting another crop.
“‘We will have warm shoes and good clothes next winter if the Rain doesn’t come and stay too long,’ said the boy.