Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/30



T WAS late in November and it had been raining without cessation for more than three weeks—not vigorously, as I have seen it rain in New York and Philadelphia, but with a dull persistence, as it rains nowhere else except in the West of Ireland. Rain there seems—at certain, indeed at most seasons of the year—to be the normal thing, as if the genius that presides over the weather had turned on rain and then gone to sleep. The country was saturated, and I, though well inured to the climate of Connaught, felt that the pervading damp was getting on my nerves. I was dry in bed at night—I did not seem to be dry anywhere else. I confess that my temper was bad.

John Cassidy met me on the road a mile from my house at four o'clock one afternoon. He was standing at the bottom of a muddy lane that leads up to the wretchedly poor cabin in which he lives. I realised at once that he was waiting for me. I sighed.

John Cassidy is an excellent fellow—what we call a decent poor man—and I would do a good deal for him; but I did not want to do anything for him just then. I wanted to get home and change my sodden clothes. I had been tramping