Page:Under the Sun.djvu/99

Rh being huddled together, and the air has been filled this hour past with their warning cries. They have now gone clamorous home. The green parrots, birds of the world as they are, went over long ago, screaming and streaming by. The crows, too, after casting about for a nearer shelter, have flung themselves across the sky towards the hospitable city. But after a long interval come by the last birds, who have dawdled over that “one worm more” too long, calling out as they pass to their comrades far ahead to wait for them; and then, after another while, comes “the very last bird,” — for when the storm is at its worst, there is always one more to pass, flying too busily to speak, and scudding heavily across the sloping rain. The young crow meant to have seen the storm out, and so he kept his seat on the roof, and in the insolence of his glossy youth rallied his old relatives escaping from the wet; but a little later, as he flapped his spongy wings ruefully homeward, he regretted that he had not listened to the voice of experience. For the rain is raining, — raining as if the water were tired of the world’s existence, — raining as if the rain hated the earth with its flowers and fruits.

And now the paths begin to show how heavy the fall is. On either side runs down a fussy stream, all pitted with rain-spot dimples, from which the larger stones jut out like pigmy Teneriffes in a mimic Atlantic; but the rain still comes down, and the two fussy streams soon join into a shallow, smoothly flowing sheet, and there is nothing from bank to bank but water-bubbles hurrying down; yet, haste as they may, they get their crowns broken by the rain-drops before they reach the corner. And now you begin to suspect rain on the sunken lawn; but before long there is no room for mere suspicion, for