"It is an abominable day for your first one. Just look at
that!"--she summoned John by a glance over her shoulder; "pouring! And
usually we pride ourselves on our view."

Sheets of rain were driving across the field at the foot of the knoll
upon which the house stood. At times the mountains beyond were shut off
entirely. Again the clouds overhead blew past, and through a leaden
light the storms in the distance could be seen, thickening under some
canopy of blackness, or ceasing as the upper mist grew thin.

"What an advantage it gives you to have such a stretch of open
country," said John. "Here you can see a storm coming when it is yet
twenty miles away, and make your plans accordingly; but in New York,
with the horizon line on the roofs of the houses across the street, you
may be caught by a shower that was lurking over the Battery when you
left your own door."

"I can't understand the foliage being so little advanced," said
Katrina. "It's the last of April, and yet the leaves hardly are
starting. They aren't much ahead of the Park."

"You expected a Florida climate, perhaps. We never cease to have winter
letters from people in the North who lament their cold, and wish they
were with us on our 'rose-covered veranda in the Sunny South,' and it
may be zero when we are reading their flights of imagination."

"Is it really ever as cold as that?"

"Not often, but quite often enough. I've known snow as late as the
twentieth of April, and I've been to a picnic on Buzzard Mountain in
January."

"We're always hearing about this wonderful climate. It sounds as if it
were remarkable chiefly for eccentricity."

"Oh, the average temperature is very even. The summers are delightful,
too,--a long warm season instead of a short hot one. Though you may
have fires now and then, it's not cool enough to close the windows,
night or day, from the first of May to the first of October, and yet it
seldom goes over eighty-five."

"It's the equilibrium between altitude and latitude, showing what it
can do, isn't it?" asked John. "The fact that we are half a mile above
the booming waters of the deep, my dear Katrina, counterbalances the
nine hundred miles that lie between us and that large and noisy city to
which I have no doubt your heart is turning fondly."

"Here are some men on horseback, Sydney," said Katrina, again ignoring
her brother.

The wind was dying and the rain was lessening with each fitful gust.

"Are they cavalier