e, and it grew a little
when her mother remarked that the dishwater boiled away so fast and
the cows lay down so much that she believed it would rain the next
day. When, that same afternoon, the welcome shower came with scarce
ten minutes' warning, Huldah could hardly believe her eyes and ears.
She jumped from her couch of anguish and remorse like an excited
kitten, darted out of the house unmindful of the lightning, drove the
Jersey calf under cover, chased the chickens into the coop, bolstered
up the tomatoes so that the wind and rain would not blow the fruit
from the heavily laden plants, opened the blinds and closed the
windows.

"It comes from the east," she cried, dancing up and down in a glow of
childish glee--"it comes from the east, and it's blowing in on
Jennie's side of the buggy!" She did not know that Pitt had changed
places with his bride, and that his broad shoulder was shielding her
from the "angry airt."

Then she flew into the kitchen and pinned up her blown hair in front
of the cracked looking-glass, thinking with sympathetic tenderness how
pretty she looked, with her crown of chestnut tendrils tightened by
the dampness, her round young cheeks crimsoned by the wind, and her
still tearful eyes brightened by unchristian joy. She remembered with
naughty satisfaction how rain invariably straightened Jennie Perkins's
frizzes, and was glad, _glad_ that it did. Her angry passions were so
beautifying that the radiant vision in the glass almost dazzled her.
It made her very sorry for Pitt too. She hated to think that his
ill-temper and stubborn pride and obstinacy had lost him such a lovely
creature as herself, and had forced him to waste his charms on so
unappreciative and plain a person as Jennie Perkins. She remembered
that Pitt had asked her to marry him coming home from the fair in a
rainstorm. If he meant anything he said on that occasion, he must be
suffering pangs of regret to-day. Oh, how good, how sweet, how kind of
it to rain and support her in what she had prophesied of Saturday
weather!

All at once a healing thought popped into her head. "I shall not live
many years," she reflected--"not after losing Pitt, and having his
mother crow over me, and that hateful Jennie Perkins, having the
family hair wreath hanging over her sofa, and my wedding ring on her
hand; but so long as I live I will keep account of rainy Saturdays,
and find a way to send the record to Pitt every New Year's Day just to
pr