140 | Fairy Tales

No sooner had the children got well than
the fine weather broke up and it began to
rain. What was more, the rain went on in
a way which no one ever remembered before.
Night and day it fell in torrents. Great
pools stood everywhere, the grass was SO
sodden that the water squished up under
each footstep, and where there were rivers
they overflowed, so that the whole country
seemed to be flooded. A great deal had to
be done to keep the sheep from being swept
away and drowned, and the farmer, his men,
and old Wolf were working their hardest all
day, and sometimes half the night. Ju-Ju
thought them extremely foolish. He was
convinced that they would have been much
wiser to have kept dry at home, sat by the
fire, and eaten their suppers; but when he
‘said so to Wolf, he got the sort of answer
which made him unwilling to offer his
opinions, unless some one was by to protect
him. So he ran home, and stretched him-
self lazily before the blazing logs, and told
Joan that Wolf was very old, and stupid,