such as one reads about, but along about noon it began to
cloud over and soon the rain poured down in rain-gauges-full.

[Illustration: She would turn away and bite her lip.]

"I was all discouraged, and as I wrote out the forecast for the papers,
'Rain to-morrow and Friday,' I felt like giving the whole thing up and
going back to Vermont to live.

"When I got home, Alice was there with her things on, waiting for me.

"'You needn't tell me what it's going to be to-morrow,' she sobbed. 'I
know. Every one knows. The whole world knows. I used to think that it
wasn't your fault, but when the children come home from school crying
because they have been plagued for being the Weather Man's children,
when every time I go out I know that the neighbors are talking behind my
back and saying "How does she stand it?" when every paper I read, every
bulletin I see, stares me in the face with great letters saying,
"Weather Man predicts more rain," or "Lynch the Weather Man and let the
baseball season go on," then I think it is time for us to come to an
understanding. I am going over to mother's until you can do better.'"

The Weather Man got up and went to the window. Out there over the
Battery there was a spot casting a sickly glow through the cloud-banks
which filled the sky.

"That's the moon up there behind the fog," he said, and laughed a bitter
cackle.

It was now 11:45. The thermograph was writing busily in red ink on the
little diagrammed cuff provided for that purpose, writing all about the
temperature. The Weather Man inspected the fine, jagged line as it
leaked out of the pen on the chart. Then he walked over to the window
again and stood looking out over the bay.

"You'd think that people would have a little gratitude," he said in a
low voice, "and not hit at a man who has done so much for them. If it
weren't for me where would the art of American conversation be to-day?
If there were no weather to talk about, how could there be any dinner
parties or church sociables or sidewalk chats?

"All I have to do is put out a real scorcher or a continued cold snap,
and I can drive off the boards the biggest news story that was ever
launched or draw the teeth out of the most delicate international
situation.

"I have saved more reputations and social functions than any other
influence in American life, and yet here, when the home office sends me
a rummy lot of weather, over which I have no control, everybody jumps on
me."