“Yes, miss; there are a spot up nigh back of Thunder Bay—that’s to north of Lake Superior—and there it do rain in July—solid.”
“Solid?” said Lyndsay.
“I said solid. Folks moves out for a month, otherwise they is drownded standin’.”
“That is a trapper’s tale, Rose. I have heard it before.”
“It is near enough here to being solid to enable me to believe the rest. How the boughs leap every now and then as they drop their loads of rain, and how slate-blue and opaque the water is!”
“Notice these great drops: each rebounds from the surface in a little column, so as to seem like black spikes in the water. See, too, how the circles they make cross one another without breaking. Smoke rings do that,” and he blew successive circlets of his pipe-smoke, as he spoke, so that they passed across one another, breaking and remaking their rolling rings.
“Why is that?” she said.
“I do not know. I hardly care to ask. I am in the mood of mere acceptance. Oh, there is the sun, Rose! See how between the finger-like needles of the pine the drops are held, and what splendid jewelry the sun is making. It needs a still hour for this. You have seen a thing in its perfection quite rare.”
“Must we go, Pardy? It has done raining.”
“Yes, we must go. I forgot to ask you to listen to the different noises a heavy rain makes according as you stand under pine or spruce, or hear it patter on the flat-lying, deciduous leaves, or hum on the water. Come, you must take the twenty-pounder to Dorothy Maybrook. If it is not too wet, she will perhaps walk up to Colkett’s with you. But don’t go into the cabin. You might take for those poor people two or three cans of corned beef. Meats are scarce luxuries with them. They will need no money just at present. Mr. Carington gave them some help.”