Miss Priscilla snorted. "If I don't get hold of the desecrating hand of man pretty soon, you'll be havin' a stream o' water come down on your bed, the first rain." The girl's attitude of adoration remained unchanged. "I noticed that little rift," she said slowly. "As I lay in bed this morning, I looked up at a spot of sapphire that seemed like a day-star full of promise of this transcendent beauty." Miss Wilbur's pretty lips moved but little when she spoke and her slow utterance gave the effect of a recitation. Miss Priscilla, for all her harassment, could not forbear a smile. "I'm certainly glad you're so easily pleased, but you don't know Casco Bay as well as I do, or that day-star would look powerful stormy to you. When it rains here, all other rains are mere imitations. It comes down from the sky and up from the ground, and the wind blows it east and west, and the porch furniture turns somersets out into the field, and windows and doors go back on you and give up the fight and let the water in everywhere, while the thunder rolls like the day o' judgment." The ardent light in the depths of the young girl's eyes glowed deeper. "I should expect a storm here to be inexorably superb!" she declared. Miss Priscilla heaved a sigh, half dejection, half exasperation, and turned into the house. "Drat that plumber!" she said. "I've only had a few days of it, but I'm sick of luggin' water in from that well." "Why, Miss Burridge," said her boarder solicitously, "I haven't fully realized--let me bring in a supply." "No, no, indeed, Miss Wilbur," exclaimed Miss Priscilla, as she moved through the living-room of the house into the kitchen, closely followed by Diana. "It ain't that I ain't able to do it, but it makes me darned mad when I know there's no need of it." "But I desire to, Miss Burridge," averred the young girl. "Any form of movement here cannot fail to be one of joy." She seized an empty bucket from the sink and went out the back door. Small groves of evergreen dotted the incline behind the house, and on the right hand soon became a wood-road of stately fir and spruce, which led to a sun-warmed grassy slope which, like every hill of the lovely isle, led down to the jagged rocks that fringed its irregular shore. "My muscular strength is not excessive," panted Diana, struggling up to the back door with her heavy bucket. "I'll fill it only half-full next time." "You ain't goin' to fill it at all," declared Miss Priscilla emphatically, taking the pail from her. "That'll last me a long time, and when it's gone, I'll get more myself. 'T ain't that it does me a bit of hurt, but it riles me when I know there ain't any need of it." She set the pail down beside the sink, filled the kettle from it, and set it on the oil stove while Diana sat down on the back doorstep. Then she proceeded: