"It won't last very long," Mrs. Gates consoled her. "A year ago we'd have been heart-broken at the sight of such a rain. It would have meant ruin for all the crops. The surplus water would not have drained off in a fortnight. But since they began digging the ditches, we know that our crops will be safe, even if it rains for a week."
"I'm glad to learn that Rod's hard work counts for something," said Marian impatiently. She flattened her downcast face against the pane. "In the meantime, I feel like a marooned pirate. If I can't get out of doors for some fresh air before long, I'll develop a pirate's disposition, too."
At dusk she tried again to call Roderick on the telephone, to demand sympathy for her imprisonment. But to her astonishment she could get no reply from central.
"The wires are all down, I dare say," said Mrs. Gates cheerfully. "It'll be three or four days before the line-men can get around to repair damages. The roads are hub deep. No telling when they can haul their repair wagons through. You'll see."
Marian did see. The district roads had been all but impassable ever since her coming. Now, thanks to this downpour, they would be bottomless pits of mire.
"Well! It's worse this morning, if anything," Mrs. Gates announced cheerfully, as Marian appeared on the third gray morning. "'Pears to me that you won't get out-doors again before the Fourth of July."
"But I must have some air. I can't stay cooped up forever," cried Marian. "If you'd only lend me your rubber boots, Mrs. Gates; the ones you wear when you're gardening. Then I could put on my mackintosh and my rubber bathing-cap and splash about beautifully. Besides, I must go down to the canal. I must see how Rod is getting on. Think, it has been two days since I have heard one word from him. Yet he is barely two miles away!"
Mrs. Gates yielded at last to her coaxing. Soon Marian started out, wearing the borrowed boots and Mr. Gates's oil-skin coat. She stumbled and splashed away through the dripping woods, with Finnegan romping gayly behind. Rainy weather held no melancholy for Finnegan. Shut in the house, he had made those three days memorable for the household, especially for poor irate Empress, who had taken refuge at last on the top rafter of the corn-bin. On the way to camp he flushed three rabbits, chased a fat gray squirrel into chattering fury, and dragged Marian knee-deep into a bog, in his wild eagerness to dig out an imaginary woodchuck.
"I wish I had a little of your vim, Finnegan." Marian sat down, soaked and breathless, on the step of Sally Lou's martin-box. From that eminence she surveyed the canal and its swarms of laborers. Her eyes clouded.
In spite of her growing interest in Roderick's work, to look upon that work always puzzled her and disheartened her. The slow black water; the ugly mud-piled banks; the massive engines throbbing night and day through a haze of steam; the gigantic dredge machines, swinging their great steel arms back and forth, up and down, lifting tons of earth from the bottom of the ditch and placing it on the waiting barge with weird, unerring skill. Most of all, the heavy tide of hurry and anxiety that seemed to rise higher every day. All these things vexed her and harassed her. When Rod talked over his work with her with all his eager enthusiasm, she could share his triumph or lament his disappointment, as the case might be. But the work itself was so huge, so complicated, that she could never quite grasp it. She could never understand her brother's passionate interest.