From the maples I made for the lee of the barn eaves, disturbing the hens who were sulking there. They stepped ostentatiously out into the rainy barnyard with an air of pointedly _not_ noticing me, but of knowing all the time whose fault it was. They weren't liking the weather, anyhow, the hens weren't, and showed it plainly in the wet, streaky droop of their feathers and the exasperated look in their red eyes. "Those hens look as if they thought I could do something about it if I only would," I said to Jonathan as we passed them. "Yes, they aren't a cordial crowd. Here, we'll show them how to take weather!" We were passing under an apple tree; Jonathan seized a drooping bough, and a sheet of water shook itself out on our shoulders. I gasped and ducked, and a hen who stood too near scuttered off with low duckings of indignation. "Now you're really wet, you can enjoy yourself," said Jonathan; and there was something in it, though I was loath to admit it at the moment. A moment before I had felt rather appalled at the sight of the rain-swept lane; now I hastened on recklessly. "I think," said Jonathan, "it's the back of my neck that counts. After that's wet I don't care what happens." "Yes," I agreed, "that's a stronghold. But I think with me it's my shoulders." It did not really matter which it was; neck and shoulders both were wet,--back, arms, everything. We tramped down across the hollow, over the brook, whose flood was backing up into the swamp on each side. I paused to look off across the huckleberry hillside beyond. "How the rain changes everything!" I said. All the colors had freshened and darkened, and the blur of the rain softened the picture and "brought it together," as the painters say. "Well," said Jonathan, "woods or open?" "Which is the wettest?" "Woods." "Then woods." And we plunged in under the big chestnuts, through a mass of witch-hazel and birch. Jonathan was quite right. Woods were the wettest. One can hardly fancy anything quite so wet. Solid water, like a river, is not comparable, because it is all in one lump; you know where it is, and you can get out of it when you want to. But here in the woods the water was everywhere, ready to hurl itself upon us, from above, from beside us, from below. Every step, every motion, drew upon us drenching showers of great drops that had been hanging heavily in the leaves ready to break away at a touch. Little streamlets of water ran from the drooping edges of my hat and from my chin, water dashed in my eyes and I blinked it out. Jonathan, pausing to hold back a dripping spray of blackberry, heavy with fruit, remarked, "Aren't you getting a little damp?" "I wonder if I am!" I answered joyously, and plunged on into the next thicket.