Half an hour afterwards I was encamped under the pencil-cedar and the old green umbrella. You cannot screen your whole person in a long chair with these two things, and I added to myself a water-proof sheet. It was a magnificent moment. The rain was coming down straight and thick with a loud, steady drum, small flat puddles were dancing all about me, and brooks were running under my chair--I sat calm and regardless. I was really quite dry and not nearly so uncomfortable as I looked; but I presented a spectacle of misery that afforded me a subtle joy. The only drawback was that there was nobody to witness it; Thisbe and Tiglath-Pileser seemed by common consent to withdraw themselves to the back parts. Only Dumboo circulated disconsolately about the verandah, with the heavy knowledge that now without doubt it was proved that the mistress was mad; and I wished to be thought indifferent only, not insane. He seemed to think that I required surveillance, and kept an anxious eye upon me until I sent him about his business. It was a day of great affairs in the garden; I could hear them going on all round me. To everybody there it meant a radical change of housekeeping; some families were coming out and some going in, some moving up and some down, while others would depart, almost at once, for the season. No wonder they all talked at once in an excited murmur under the rain. I could hear the murmur, but I could not distinguish the voices; between the rain and the umbrella, most of the garden was hidden from me, and it is a curious fact that if you cannot see a flower you cannot hear what it says. Only the pansy beds came within eyesight and ear-shot, and there I could see that consternation and confusion reigned. It is the beginning of the end for the pansies; they love rain in watering-pots, morning and evening, and a bright sun all day, and this downpour disconcerts them altogether. They cry out, every one of them, against the waste and improvidence of it. For another month they will go on opening fresh buds and uttering fresh protests, plainly disputing among themselves whether, under such adverse circumstances, life is worth living; and one sad day I shall find that they have decided it is not. I am always sorry to see the last pansy leave the garden; it goes with such regret. I intended to be undisturbed and normal, and to accomplish pages; but I find that you cannot think in heavy rain. It is too fierce, too attacking. You know that it will not do you any harm, but your nerves are not convinced; you can only wait in a kind of physical suspense, like the cows in the fields, whose single idea I am sure is, “How soon will it be over?”