ndered if they were made so on purpose, and resolved to notice if
the next place had the same arrangement.

But as they reached the next place and the next, lo! the phenomenon was
repeated and Dr. Hope's lawn too was in the same condition,--everything
was overlaid with water. They began to suspect what it must mean, and
Mrs. Hope confirmed the suspicion. It was irrigation day in Mountain
Avenue, it seemed. Every street in the town had its appointed period when
the invaluable water, brought from a long distance for the purpose, was
"laid on" and kept at a certain depth for a prescribed number of hours.

"We owe our grass and shrubs and flower-beds entirely to this
arrangement," Mrs. Hope told them. "Nothing could live through our dry
summers if we did not have the irrigating system."

"Are the summers so dry?" asked Clover. "It seems to me that we have had a
thunder-storm almost every day since we came."

"We do have a good many thunderstorms," Mrs. Hope admitted; "but we can't
depend on them for the gardens."

"And did you ever hear such magnificent thunder?" asked Dr. Hope.
"Colorado thunder beats the world."

"Wait till you see our magnificent Colorado hail," put in Mrs. Hope,
wickedly. "That beats the world, too. It cuts our flowers to pieces, and
sometimes kills the sheep on the plains. We are very proud of it. The
doctor thinks everything in Colorado perfection."

"I have always pitied places which had to be irrigated," remarked Clover,
with her eyes fixed on the little twin-lakes which yesterday were lawns.
"But I begin to think I was mistaken. It's very superior, of course, to
have rains; but then at the East we sometimes don't have rain when we want
it, and the grass gets dreadfully yellow. Don't you remember, Phil, how
hard Katy and I worked last summer to keep the geraniums and fuschias
alive in that long drought? Now, if we had had water like this to come
once a week, and make a nice deep pond for us, how different it would have
been!"

"Oh, you must come out West for real comfort," said Dr. Hope. "The East is
a dreadfully one-horse little place, anyhow."

"But you don't mean New York and Boston when you say 'one-horse little
place,' surely?"

"Don't I?" said the undaunted doctor. "Wait till you see more of us out
here."

"Here's Poppy, at last," cried Mrs. Hope, as a girl came hurriedly up the
walk. "You're late, dear."

"Poppy," whose real name was Marian Chase, was the girl who had been asked