children!

Shouting, they ran to the flooded gutters. Here were rivers, lakes, and
oceans for navigation; easy pilotage, for the steersman had but to wade
beside his craft and guide it with a twig. Jane's timely boat was one of
the first to reach the water.

Her mother had been kind, and Jane, with shoes and stockings left behind
her on the porch, was a happy sailor as she waded knee-deep along the
brimming curbstones. At the corner below the house of the Baxters, the
street was flooded clear across, and Jane's boat, following the current,
proceeded gallantly onward here, sailed down the next block, and was
thoughtlessly entering a sewer when she snatched it out of the water.
Looking about her, she perceived a gutter which seemed even lovelier
than the one she had followed. It was deeper and broader and perhaps a
little browner, wherefore she launched her ship upon its dimpled bosom
and explored it as far as the next sewer-hole or portage. Thus the
voyage continued for several blocks with only one accident--which might
have happened to anybody. It was an accident in the nature of a fall,
caused by the sliding of Jane's left foot on some slippery mud.
This treacherous substance, covered with water, could not have been
anticipated; consequently Jane's emotions were those of indignation
rather than of culpability. Upon rising, she debated whether or not
she should return to her dwelling, inclining to the opinion that the
authorities there would have taken the affirmative; but as she was
wet not much above the waist, and the guilt lay all upon the mud,
she decided that such an interruption of her journey would be a gross
injustice to herself. Navigation was reopened.

Presently the boat wandered into a miniature whirlpool, grooved in a
spiral and pleasant to see. Slowly the water went round and round, and
so did the boat without any assistance from Jane. Watching this movement
thoughtfully, she brought forth from her drenched pocket some sodden
whitish disks, recognizable as having been crackers, and began to eat
them. Thus absorbed, she failed at first to notice the approach of two
young people along the sidewalk.

They were the entranced William and Miss Pratt; and their appearance
offered a suggestive contrast in relative humidity. In charming and
tender-colored fabrics, fluffy and cool and summery, she was specklessly
dry; not a drop had touched even the little pink parasol over her
shoulder, not one had fallen upon