The rains have come. They were due on the fifteenth of June and they are late; this is the twentieth. The whole of yesterday afternoon we could see them beating up the valleys, and punctually at midnight they arrived, firing their own salute with a great clap of thunder and a volley on the roof--it is a galvanized roof--that left no room for doubt. You will notice that it is the rains that have come and not the rain; there is more difference than you would imagine between water and water. The rain is a gentle thing and descends in England; the rains are untamed, torrential, and visit parts of the East. They come to stay; for three good months they are with us, pelting the garden, beating at the panes. It would be difficult for persons living in the temperate zone to conceive how wet, during this period, our circumstances are. One always hears them burst with a feeling of apprehension; it is such a violent movement of nature, potential of damage, certain of change; and life is faced next morning at breakfast with a gloom which is not assumed. A dripping dulness varied by deluges, that is the prospect for the next ninety days. The emotions of one who will be expected to support it under an umbrella, with the further protection of a conifer only, are offered, please, to your kind consideration. I dreamed as the night wore on of shipwreck in a sea of mountains on a cane chair, and when I awoke, salvaged in my bed, it was raining as hard as ever. At breakfast Tiglath-Pileser said, uneasily, that it would probably clear up in half an hour. “It simply can’t go on like this,” remarked Thisbe, and I saw that they were thinking of me, under the conifer. When you suspect commiseration the thing to do is to enhance it. “Clear up?” said I with indifference. “Why should it clear up? It has only just begun.” “It is all very well to sit out in the rain in England,” said Thisbe; “but this is quite a different thing.” “Oh dear, no,” said I. “There is only a little more of it.” “Well, if it continues to pelt like this, of course--” began Tiglath-Pileser. “I shall take the old green gamp,” I put in, “it’s the biggest.” They glanced at each other; I perceived the glance though my attention was supposed to be given to a curried egg. A word of petition would have installed me at once by the drawing-room fire; but a commanding pride rose up in me and forbade the word. Tiglath-Pileser, who holds to carrying out a system thoroughly, asked me thoughtfully if I wouldn’t have a little marmalade with my egg; and the matter dropped.