The warm dining-room was pleasant to return to, and we sat down to cookies and milk, feeling almost cozy.
“I’ve always wanted to know how it would be to go out in the middle of the night this way,” I remarked, “and now I know.”
“Not at all. Just appreciative. But now, if you haven’t any _other_ plan, we’ll go back to bed.”
It was half-past eight when we waked next morning. But there was nothing to wake up for. The old house was filled with the rain-noises that only such an old house knows. On the little windows the drops pricked sharply; in the fireplace with the straight flue they fell, hissing, on the embers. On the porch roofs the rain made a dull patter of sound; on the tin roof of the “little attic” over the kitchen it beat with flat resonance. In the big attic, when we went up to see if all was tight, it filled the place with a multitudinous clamor; on the sides of the house it drove with a fury that re-echoed dimly within doors.
Outside, everything was afloat. We visited the trees and viewed with consternation the torrents of rain-water pouring into the pails. We tried fastening pans over the spouts to protect them. The wind blew them merrily down the road. It would have been easy enough to cover the pails, but how to let the sap drip in and the rain drip out—that was the question.
“It seems as if there was a curse on the syrup this year,” said Janet.
“The trouble is,” I said, “I know just enough to have lost my hold on the fool’s Providence, and not enough really to take care of myself.”
“What do you call your idea of the curse?” I retorted. “Anyway, I have an idea! Look, Janet! We’ll just cut up these enamel-cloth table-covers here by the sink and everywhere, and tack them around the spouts.”
Janet’s thrifty spirit was doubtful. “Don’t you need them?”
“Not half so much as the trees do. Come on! Pull them off. We’ll have to have fresh ones this summer, anyway.”
We stripped the kitchen tables and the pantry and the milk-room. We got tacks and a hammer and scissors, and out we went again. We cut a piece for each tree, just enough to go over each pair of spouts and protect the pail. When tacked on, it had the appearance of a neat bib, and as the pattern was a blue and white check, the effect, as one looked down the road at the twelve trees, was very fresh and pleasing. It seemed to cheer the people who drove by, too.