and spoil-sport _now_, I should like to know?"

"Shut up!" said the Mother of the Winds, sharply. "And as to you two,"
she added, turning to the South and West Winds, "if you don't stand
still and give an account of yourselves, I'll pop you into your
respective Bags in the twinkling of a hundred-ton gun!"

"Why, who is _she_, that she should call us over the clouds?" cried
the two Winds, stopping their blowing a bit, and pointing to the
Princess.

"She is my guest," said the old woman; "and if that does not satisfy
you, you need only get into the Bags. Do you understand me now?"

Well, this did the business at once; and the two Winds, in a breath,
began to relate whence they came, and what they had been doing for
nearly three months past.

"We have been spoiling the English Summer," they said.

"_That's_ nothing new," muttered the Mother of the Winds.

"_Isn't_ it, though--in the way _we've_ done it?" cried the two,
triumphantly. "Why, those two Boys over yonder, uniting their
flatulent forces, could not have done better--or worse. Ho! ho! ho!
_They_ made last winter a frozen Sahara. _We've_ made the present
summer a squashy Swamp! The winter was as dry as the dust of RAMESES.
The summer has been as wet as old St. Swithin's gingham. We soaked
June, we drenched July, and we drowned August. We squelched the
strawberry season, reducing tons of promising fruit to flavourless