The anniversary of our local fair was a day of heat and stupor, the sun glaring hazily between tired-looking clouds that in the distance gathered up now and again into lowering darkness. “Depend upon it, there's thunder about,” people said. Two or three hasty and straight-falling showers, from the edges of those storm-clouds, refreshed the garden, the dank earth showing black and strong after them.

“Nice feedin' showers,” said Bettesworth, with a quiet approval as pleasant to hear as the pattering rain.

The next day he told me, “Old Morrison was sayin' they had a tremendous rain over there at Bargate and Moorways yesterday.

Well, we knows they must have had. We could see it gwine over that way. But they says it come so hard that it even washed the 'taters out o' the ground.”

I hoped we shouldn't get it so heavily as that.

“No. It have come wonderful nice, so fur; and I thinks we're gwine to git some more. I hope so. 't 'll do good. And now that ground there lays nice for 't to soak in. I en't dug it—on'y jest spuddled it up. Now, if we gits some more rain in another week or two, we'll 'ave some turnips in there.”