Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/96

92 "I tell you there would be no rain nor snow but for the help of the wind and the clouds.

"You know well that the rain is made from the ocean water.

"One day the water said to the cloud, 'Friend, I should like to journey around and around the sky, but I have no wings, and can not fly. My body is so heavy that I can not move it, and I never expect to take this trip unless you, my friend, help me.'

"And so we lifted the water and helped it step by step until we floated it through the air. Our first cloud faces were very light, but after we had traveled five or six miles through the sky our faces changed to gray, and when we had gone one thousand miles our faces became black and the farmers said, 'We shall soon have rain.'

"Do you know why the faces of clouds grow black?" asked the wind.

"Anger makes things black," said the snow, "but why should we know, for of ourselves we never change color."

"It was because great strength was being put forth to travel through the sky," argued the wind, "for soon the drops of water said, 'We are tired and want to go back to earth again.'

"Then we said to the water, 'The earth people need