* * *

The next day was sloppy and uncertain. A thin rain drizzled languidly.
One can stand that sort of thing on a summer Bank Holiday; one expects
it. But to have a bad December Bank Holiday is too much of a bad thing.
Some steps should surely be taken to confuse the weather clerk's
chronology. Once let him know that Bank Holiday is coming, and he writes
to the company for more water. To-day his stock seemed low and he was
dribbling it out; at times the wintry sun would shine in a feeble,
diluted way, and though the holiday-makers would have preferred to take
their sunshine neat, they swarmed forth in their myriads whenever there
was a ray of hope. But it was only dodging the raindrops; up went the
umbrellas again, and the streets became meadows of ambulating mushrooms.

Denzil Cantercot sat in his fur overcoat at the open window, looking at
the landscape in water colors. He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and
spoke of the Beautiful. Crowl was with him. They were in the first floor
front, Crowl's bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was
livelier than the parlor with its outlook on the backyard. Mrs. Crowl
was an anti-tobacconist as regards the best bedroom; but Peter did not
like to put the poet or his cigarette out. He felt there was something
in common between smoke and poetry, over and above their being both
Fads. Besides, Mrs. Crowl was sulking in the kitchen. She had been
arranging for an excursion with Peter and the children to Victoria Park.
She had dreamed of the Crystal Palace, but Santa Claus had put no gifts
in the cobbler's shoes. Now she could not risk spoiling the feather in
her bonnet. The nine brats expressed their disappointment by slapping
one another on the staircases. Peter felt that Mrs. Crowl connected him
in some way with the rainfall, and was unhappy. Was it not enough that
he had been deprived of the pleasure of pointing out to a superstitious
majority the mutual contradictions of Leviticus and the Song of Solomon?
It was not often that Crowl could count on such an audience.

"And you still call Nature beautiful?" he said to Denzil, pointing to
the ragged sky and the dripping eaves. "Ugly old scarecrow!"

"Ugly she seems to-day," admitted Denzil. "But what is Ugliness but a
higher form of Beauty? You have to look deeper into it to see it; such
vision is the priceless gift of the few. To me this wan desolation of
sighing rain is lovely as the sea-washed ruins o