la had shaken her head gently at them while
she talked to the two pretty ones. The little brown birds seemed to
know, too, that they could come back to the gravel to look for crumbs
again.

Then, as the little girls were again eating their cakes, one little
girl said: "Sister Angela, were they Sisters?"

Sister Angela said: "No, they are not Sisters."

Then another little girl asked: "Sister Angela, what were they, then?"

Sister Angela said: "They are only just ladies."

Then always after that Bessie Bell and the other little girls were glad
when Only-Just-Ladies came to see them.

The sun shone nearly always, or it seemed to the little girls that it
nearly always shone, out in that large garden where they could play the
hour in the sand, and where they could spend one hour eating their
cakes with their feet on the gravel, and where they could walk behind
Sister Justina on all the shell-bordered walks around the beds (but
they must not step on the beds)--just one hour. If a rain came it
always did surprise them: those little girls were always surprised when
it rained! and they did not know exactly what to do when it rained,
though they knew almost always what to do when the sun shone. One day
when it rained it happened that the little girls were all left over the
one hour in the long room where all the rows and rows of the little
arm-chairs sat, and where all the little girls learned to Count, and to
say Their Prayers, and to Tell the Time, and to sing "Angels Bright,"
and to know the A B C blocks. Sister Theckla, who always stayed the
one hour in that room, had gone to say to the Sisters that the one hour
was over, and that it was raining, and what must the little girls do
now?

While Sister Theckla was gone, all the little girls went to the
windows, and all the tiny girls looked at the rain coming down, coming
down in drops, so many drops; and so fast the drops came that they
seemed to come in long strings of drops straight from the sky.

Then one little girl laughed and began to beat on the window by which
she stood, to beat all over it as far as her little damp pink fingers
could reach, and to say:

"Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!
Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!
Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!"

And all the little girls thought that was so beautiful that they began
to beat all over the windows, too, just as high and just as far as
their little damp pink fingers could reach, and to sing as loud and as