"Wait till you see our magnificent Colorado hail," put in Mrs. Hope,
wickedly. "That beats the world, too. It cuts our flowers to pieces, and
sometimes kills the sheep on the plains. We are very proud of it. The
doctor thinks everything in Colorado perfection."

"I have always pitied places which had to be irrigated," remarked Clover,
with her eyes fixed on the little twin-lakes which yesterday were lawns.
"But I begin to think I was mistaken. It's very superior, of course, to
have rains; but then at the East we sometimes don't have rain when we want
it, and the grass gets dreadfully yellow. Don't you remember, Phil, how
hard Katy and I worked last summer to keep the geraniums and fuschias
alive in that long drought? Now, if we had had water like this to come
once a week, and make a nice deep pond for us, how different it would have
been!"

"Oh, you must come out West for real comfort," said Dr. Hope. "The East is
a dreadfully one-horse little place, anyhow."

"But you don't mean New York and Boston when you say 'one-horse little
place,' surely?"

"Don't I?" said the undaunted doctor. "Wait till you see more of us out
here."

"Here's Poppy, at last," cried Mrs. Hope, as a girl came hurriedly up the
walk. "You're late, dear."

"Poppy," whose real name was Marian Chase, was the girl who had been asked
to meet them. She was a tall, rosy creature, to whom Clover took an