Page:Under the Sun.djvu/100

76 the level water is showing white through the green grass, in which the shrubs stand ankle-deep. How patiently the flowers wait in their ditches, bending their poor heads to the ground, and turning up their green calices to be pelted! But besides the trees and flowers and washed-out insects, there are but few creatures out in the rain. Here comes a seal carrying a porpoise on his back. No! it is our friend the bheesty. Dripping like a seaweed, a thing of all weathers, he splashes by through the dreary waste of waters like one of the pre-Adamite creatures in the Period of Sludge. Who can want water at such a time as this? you feel inclined to ask, as the shiny bheesty, bending under his shiny water-skin, squelches past, his red apron, soaked to a deep maroon, clinging to his knees. A servant remembers something left out of doors, and with his master’s wrath very present to him, detaches his mouth from the hookah bowl, and with his foolish skirts tucked round his waist, paddles out into the rain, showing behind his plaited umbrella like a toadstool on its travels. A young pariah dog goes by less dusty and less miserable than usual. The rain has taken much of the curl out of his tail, but he is, and he knows it, safer in the rain. There are no buggies passing now, from beneath whose hoods, as the vivid lightning leaps out of the black clouds, will leap sharp whip-lashes, curling themselves disagreeably round his thin loins, or tingling across his pink nose. There are no proud carriages with arrogant drivers to be rude to him if he stands still for a minute in the middle of the road to think; no older dogs on the watch to dispute, and probably to ravish from him, his infrequent treasure trove. The worms, too, like the rain, for they can creep easily over