ost
heart-broken Princess AGRICULTURA at the door of the Cave.

"Oh, here you are again!" she cried, "once more in the Cavern of the
Winds! And this time you have brought two of my sons with you, I see,"
she added, pointing to the South Wind and the West Wind, who were
blowing away at the Princess like bellowsy blends of Blizzards,
Cloud-bursts, Tornadoes and Tritons.

"Oh, do for pity's sake, stop them!" cried AGRICULTURA, struggling
hard to keep herself and her garments together. "It seems as though
the heavens have become one vast sluice, that keeps pouring down
water, as my predecessor, the Prince, put it. I have not a dry thread
about me. _Please_ put them in their Bags--_do_--whilst I have a
little talk with you about them, and the mischief they have been
doing."

Two prolonged chuckles, a deep stentorian one and a sharp staccato
one, came from the two Bags already hanging to the wall of the Cavern,
from whence subsequently protruded the round ruddy form of the North
and the pinched figure of the East Wind. "Ho! ho! ho!" chortled the
North Wind, chokingly. "Who says _I_ do all the damage?"

"He! he! he!" sniggered the East Wind, raspingly. "Who is the pickle
and spoil-sport _now_, I should like to know?"

"Shut up!" said the Mother of the Winds, sharply. "And as to you two,"
she added, turning to the South and West Winds, "if you don't stand
still and give an account of yourselves, I'll pop you into your
respective Bags in the twinkling of a hundred-ton gun!"

"Why, who is _she_, that she should call us over the clouds?" cried
the two Winds, stopping their blowing a bit, and pointing to the
Princess.

"She is my guest," said the old woman; "and if that does not satisfy
you, you need only get into the Bags. Do you understand me now?"

Well, this did the business at once; and the two Winds, in a breath,
began to relate whence they came, and what they had been doing for
nearly three months past.

"We have been spoiling the English Summer," they said.

"_That's_ nothing new," muttered the Mother of the Winds.

"_Isn't_ it, though--in the way _we've_ done it?" cried the two,
triumphantly. "Why, those two Boys over yonder, uniting their
flatulent forces, could not have done better--or worse. Ho! ho! ho!
_They_ made last winter a frozen Sahara. _We've_ made the present
summer a squashy Swamp! The winter was as dry as the dust of RAMESES.
The summer has been as wet as old St. Swithin's gingham. We soaked
Ju