one might have fancied--rose to meet it; and all wet surfaces,
leaves, lawns, tree-trunks, housetops, the bare crags of the
Gnisi, gleamed in a wash of gold.

Puffs of fresh air blew into the kitchen, filling it with the
keen sweet odour of wet earth. The priest and the Duchessa and
Emilia joined Peter at the open door.

"Oh, your poor, poor garden!" the Duchessa cried.

His garden had suffered a good deal, to be sure. The flowers
lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was
littered with fallen leaves and twigs--and even in one or two
places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the
ground about each rose-bush a snow of pink rose-petals lay
scattered; in the paths there were hundreds of little pools,
shining in the sun like pools of fire.

"There's nothing a gardener can't set right," said Peter,
feeling no doubt that here was a trifling tax upon the delights
the storm had procured him.

"And oh, our poor, poor hats!" said the Duchessa, eyeing
ruefully those damaged pieces of finery. "I fear no gardener
can ever set them right."

"It sounds inhospitable," said Peter, "but I suppose I had
better go and build your bridge."

So he threw a ladder athwart the river, and laid the planks in