"How to support life on such a day as this?" demanded Rita, coming out of her room, and confronting her cousins as they came upstairs. She had been asleep, and her dark eyes were still misty and vague. The others, on the contrary, had been running in the rain, and they were all a-tingle with life and fresh air, and a-twinkle with rain-drops. The moment was not a good one, and Rita's straight brows drew together ominously. "You have been--amusing yourselves, it appears," she said, in the old withering tone that they were learning to forget. "Of course, here nothing matters; one may as well be a savage as an _elegante_ in the wilderness; but I should be sorry to meet you in Havana, my cousins!" Peggy hung her head, and tried to keep her muddy feet out of sight. Margaret only laughed, and held up her petticoats higher. "You ought to have been with us, Rita!" she said. "We have had great fun. The garden is one great shower-bath, and the brook is roaring like a baby lion. I am really beginning to learn how to walk in wet feet, am I not, Peggy? I used to think I should die if my feet were wet. It is really delightful to feel the water go 'plop!' in and out of one's boots. Now, my dear," she added, "I really cannot let you be cross, because Peggy and I are in the most delightful good humour, and we came in on purpose, because we thought you would be awake, and would want to be amused. If you frown, Rita, I shall kiss you, all dripping wet, and you know you could not bear that." She advanced, holding up her rosy, shining face, down which the drops were still streaming. Rita uttered a shriek and vanished. "I don't see how you can talk to her that way," said Peggy admiringly. "When she opens her eyes at me, and pulls her eyebrows together, I feel about two inches high and three years old. You are brave in your own way, Margaret, if you can't pull people out of bogs." Margaret laughed again. "My dear, I found it was the only way," she said. "If I let her ride over me--" Here she stopped suddenly, and with a change of tone bade Peggy hasten to change her wet clothes. "It is all very fine to get wet," she said, "and I am grateful for the lesson, Peggy; but I know that one _must_ change when she comes in." Peggy made a grimace, and said that at home she was often wet through from morning till night, and nobody cared; but Margaret resolutely pushed her into her room and shut the door, before going on to her own.