When we waked in the morning of to-day it was to see rain coming down in the cataracts. This spoiled our plan of taking some walks and seeing the golf course, which Captain Winston loves to do. But also, the rain made it not good to travel. Shut up, one misses the beauty of the ways. Somehow it arranged itself through the influence of Molly and Jack that we stay long enough to have a fine day. Not to be with Mr. Caspian too much, I stayed a good deal in my room. I tried to read a novel I bought in the hotel--a hotel splendid enough for a big city, though it stands among wild mountains, so far away from the world it is--Molly says--as if Diogenes had had his tub enlarged and fitted up by Ritz. But this novel had a sad ending, I found when I looked ahead, so I could not bear to go on. By that time it was afternoon. I went downstairs. Most of our people were playing bridge, among them Larry and Mrs. Shuster, and Mr. Caspian. Molly and Jack were not there. Neither was Mr. Storm. When he saw me Mr. Caspian got up, and told his table they must make a dummy. I wished then I had stayed in my room, but it was too late. The best I could do was to walk out on the veranda--an immense veranda where the most fierce rain could not follow you to the chairs against the wall. Molly and Jack love fresh air, so I thought perhaps to find them sitting out there. But they were not to be seen; and when Mr. Caspian came on and on after me, though he hates what they love, I took a most desperate resolution. I went straight ahead as if I had come downstairs to do it, and walked right off the veranda into the pouring rain. I had no umbrella, and my head was bare and I had on a dress of white shantung silk. I knew he wouldn't follow me into the rain, and he didn't. He stood at the top of the steps and called after me that I was a crazy girl. "Come back!" he said, as if he had the right to order me about. "You will get soaked to your skin and catch your death of cold!" [Illustration: "The young, slender birches of the mountain waysides"] I looked back just long enough to answer that I _loved_ to be soaked to my skin, and I was not afraid of catching the cold. All I wanted was that he did not catch me. But I did not say this part aloud. He called out something more, but I had got too far away to hear, for I was walking fast, and the rain made a loud, sweet sound, pattering on leaves. When I had looked back, I had seen something more than the figure of Mr. Caspian standing on the steps in his nice white flannel clothes: I had seen Molly and Jack and Mr. Storm. They were not on the side of the veranda I had come out on, but just round the corner, talking together in great earnest. I did not think they saw me; but you shall know by and by!