thin, spirited dark face
in her palms.

"We have more sunny weather in Saskatchewan than in all the rest of
Canada put together, in an average year," she said, clicking her
strong, white teeth and snapping her eyes at me. "But I can't blame
you for feeling sceptical about it, Phil. If I went to a new country
and it rained every day--all day--all night--after I got there for
three whole weeks I'd think things not lawful to be uttered about the
climate too. So, little cousin, I forgive you. Remember that 'into
each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary.' Oh,
if you'd only come to visit me last fall. We had such a bee-yew-tiful
September last year. We were drowned in sunshine. This fall we're
drowned in water. Old settlers tell of a similar visitation in '72,
though they claim even that wasn't quite as bad as this."

I was sitting rather disconsolately by an upper window of Uncle
Kenneth Morrison's log house at Arrow Creek. Below was what in dry
weather--so, at least, I was told--was merely a pretty, grassy little
valley, but which was now a considerable creek of muddy yellow water,
rising daily. Beyond was a cheerless prospect of sodden prairie and
dripping "bluff."

"It would be a golden, mellow land, with purple hazes over the bluffs,
in a normal fall," assured Kate. "Even now if the sun were just to
shine out for a day and a good 'chinook' blow you'd see a surprising
change. I feel like chanting continually that old rhyme I learned in
the first primer,

'Rain, rain, go away,
Come again some other day:
--some other day next summer--
Phil and Katie want to play.'

Philippa, dear girl, don't look so dismal. It's bound to clear up
sometime."

"I wish the 'sometime' would come soon, then," I said, rather
grumpily.

"You know it hasn't really rained for three days," protested Kate.
"It's been damp and horrid and threatening, but it hasn't rained. I
defy you to say that it has actually rained."

"When it's so wet underfoot that you can't stir out without rubber
boots it might as well be wet overhead too," I said, still grumpily.

"I believe you're homesick, girl," said Kate anxiously.

"No, I'm not," I answered, laughing, and feeling ashamed of my
ungraciousness. "Nobody could be homesick with such a jolly good
fellow as you around, Kate. It's only that this weather is getting on
my nerves a bit. I'm fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. If your
chinook doesn't come so