ng you notice with a half- contemptuous sort of amusement a precocious display of ginghams and straw hats. And before you can turn round to tell anybody about it, tulips have happened!—And It's May!

More than seeming extravagantly early this year, May dawned also with extravagant lavishness. Through every prismatic color of the world, sunshine sang to the senses!

"What shall we do," fretted my Husband, "if this perfection lasts?" The question indeed was a leading one!

The scenery for Rainy Week did not arrive until the afternoon of the eighth.

From his frowning survey of bright lawns, gleaming surf, radiant sky, I saw my Husband turn suddenly with a little gasping sigh that might have meant anything.

"What is it?" I cried.

"Look!" he said, "it's come."

Silently, shoulder to shoulder, we stood and watched the gigantic storm-bales roll into the sky—packed in fleece, corded with ropes of mist, gorgeous, portentous,—To-morrow's Rain! It is not many hosts and hostesses under like circumstances who turn to each other as we did with a single whoop of joy!

An hour later, hatless and coatless in the lovely warm May twilight, we stood by the larch tree waiting for our guests. We like to have them sup in town at their own discretion or indiscretion, that first night, and all arrive together reasonably sleek and sleepy, and totally unacquainted, on the eight o'clock train. But the larch tree has always been our established point for meeting the Rainy Week people. Conceding cordially the truth of the American aphorism that while charity may perfectly legitimately begin at home, hospitality should begin at the railroad station! We personally have proved beyond all doubt that for our immediate interests at stake dramatic effect begins at the entrance to our driveway.

Yet it is always with mingled feelings of trepidation and anticipa