Once you get over being frightened, it is really great good fun, so Philippe found, to go racing along a swift-flowing river in a little boat that nods to each passing wave. They passed tall reeds and rushes that waved gracefully to them from the shore, weeping willow trees, their wands gray-green and crystal with rain, gently caressing the surface of the water, emerald fields patterned with yellow flowers shining wet, mallows by the River’s edge, white with glowing hearts of deep pink, deep pink with hearts of white. Sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, but always and ever onward, “Grandmother’s Son” carried them on his strong back; now through lowlands, and now between high banks of dark chocolaty mud, where, from the black portals of burrows and tunnels, the bright eyes of water animals gazed at them in astonishment. Yes, it was thoroughly delightful, but it was puzzling to Philippe; there were many things that he did not understand. He decided that he would ask Grandmother, who was floating close to him in her wooden tub. [Illustration: Grandmother in her wooden tub.] “Grandmother Marianne,” he called to her, “why do you call the river your son?” “Look at me, Philippe. Have I not changed?” asked Grandmother. “I am no longer Grandmother Marianne,” she said, “I am Grandmother Rain!... Without me there would be no puddles, no pools, no lakes, no ponds, no rills and runs and rivulets, no brooks and streams, no waterfalls, no rivers—their lovely and happy voices would die from the land. They are all my children. And if it were not for my children, there would be no ocean.” “What is the ocean?” asked Philippe, who had never been to the seashore. “That, my Philippe,” said Grandmother Rain, “is where I was born, and where all my children return. It is a beautiful place! And how your uncle loves to play there—a decidedly worthy man, your uncle, though at times a trifle flighty.” They passed a grove of trees, their bright branches reaching out over the water. “How fresh and strong they look,” cried Grandmother Rain. “They are always glad to see me, I can assure you. Oh, I have strange adventures, Philippe. Sometimes I am buried in the soft, brown earth, and you would think that would be the end of me, now wouldn’t you? But no! I creep back into the air through trunks of trees, through blades of grass and stalks of flowers, and through the shoots of young corn. I trickle through an endless maze of underground passages into deep wells, or until I find a place where I can come bubbling up to the surface. Every living thing needs me and every living thing loves me, except sometimes little boys kept in from play—eh?”