A watery time began, and for many days together the rain kept falling without intermission.

I almost think Annie would have died, but for her dead father to think about.

On one of those rainy days, however, she began to find that it is in the nature of good things to come in odd ways.

It had rained the whole day, not tamely and drizzingly, but in real earnest, dancing and rebounding from the pools, and raising a mist by the very "crash of water-drops." Now and then the school became silent, just to listen to the wide noise made by the busy cataract of the heavens, each drop a messenger of good, a sweet returning of earth's aspirations, in the form of Heaven's _Amen_! But the boys thought only of the fun of dabbling in the torrents as they went home; or the delights of net-fishing in the swollen and muddy rivers, when the fish no longer see their way, but go wandering about in perplexity, just as we human mortals do in a thick fog, whether of the atmosphere or of circumstance.
The afternoon was waning.

It was nearly time to go; and still the rain was pouring and plashing around.