"No; it's bees stingin' the water," said her nephew, "with long
stingers that reach clear out of the clouds."

These sky-bees stung the dusty road until it lay first in dark
dimples and last in swollen mud rows and shallow pools. The 'pike
kept its dignity under the heaviest rains. Its very mud was light and
plaster-like, scarcely clinging to the wheels or soiling the horses'
legs. Its flint ribs rung more sharply under the horses' shoes.
Through the damp dusk aunt Corinne took pleasure in watching the fire
struck by old Henry and the gray, against the trickling stones. They
pulled the carriage curtains down, and Grandma Padgett had the
oilcloth apron drawn up to her chin, while she continued to drive the
horses through a slit. The rear of the wagon made a blur ahead of
them. Now the 'pike sides faded from fresh green to a general
dulness, and trees whispering to the rain lost their vistas and
indentations of shade, and became a solid wall down which a steady
pour hissed with settled monotony. Boswell and Johnson no longer
foraged at the 'pike sides, or lagged behind or scampered ahead. They
knew it was a rainy October night without lightning and thunder,
slipped by mistake into the packet of June weather; and they trotted
invisibly under the carriage, carrying their tails down, and their
lolling tongues close to the puddles they were obliged to scamper
through or skip. Boswell and Johnson remembered their experiences at
the lonesome Susan house, where they lay in the deep weeds and were
forgotten until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their
eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels
should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way,
unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper.
It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp
or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of