* * * * *

The Mother of the Winds (acting as _locum tenens_ for her Clerk of the
Weather, who, sick of his own unseasonable work, was off to spend his
annual holiday with Mr. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in the Pacific Isles),
received the desperately damp, dishevelled, blown-about, and almost
heart-broken Princess AGRICULTURA at the door of the Cave.

"Oh, here you are again!" she cried, "once more in the Cavern of the
Winds! And this time you have brought two of my sons with you, I see,"
she added, pointing to the South Wind and the West Wind, who were
blowing away at the Princess like bellowsy blends of Blizzards,
Cloud-bursts, Tornadoes and Tritons.

"Oh, do for pity's sake, stop them!" cried AGRICULTURA, struggling
hard to keep herself and her garments together. "It seems as though
the heavens have become one vast sluice, that keeps pouring down
water, as my predecessor, the Prince, put it. I have not a dry thread
about me. _Please_ put them in their Bags--_do_--whilst I have a
little talk with you about them, and the mischief they have been
doing."

Two prolonged chuckles, a deep stentorian one and a sharp staccato
one, came from the two Bags already hanging to the wall of the Cavern,
from whence subsequently protruded the round ruddy form of the North
and the pinched figure of the East Wind. "Ho! ho! ho!" chortled the
North Wind, chokingly. "Who says _I_ do all the damage?"

"He! he! he!" sniggered the East Wind, raspingly. "Who is the pickle