He nodded again.

“What a setting for the Dream!  It drew a crowd, of course?”

“Yes, we drew the county.”

I sighed regretfully.  “How I wish I hadn’t funked it, but with my lumbago I never dare risk damp grass and it looked so awfully like rain in the morning.”

Melhuish suddenly got excited. “Looked like rain!” he said violently.  “It did rain.  It rained several drops.  I never saw such drops, as big as saucers.  Perhaps you didn’t hear the thunder?”

“My dear bean,” I said, “it was the thunder which put me off coming to see you as Bottom and Mrs. Melhuish as Titania in the most idyllic surroundings I can imagine.”

“You wouldn’t have seen us in any idyllic surroundings,” said Melhuish.  He had relapsed into moodiness again.  I could see there was something serious.

“What happened, old friend?” I said gently.

“We began rehearsing during that glorious spell of sunshine in the spring, when the garden was a carpet of daffodils and it was a sheer joy to play about out-of-doors.  Then the weather broke for a time and we migrated to the Parish Hall.  You know our Parish Hall?”

“Quite well.  A little tin place on the left from the rectory.”

“That’s it.  It’s got a platform on trestles at one end and a paraffin lamp in the middle.  The Vicar placed it at our disposal when there wasn’t a Women’s Institute or a choir practice, and on chilly nights he had the ‘Beatrice stove’ lit for us.  Then the Summer began in real earnest.  We got in extra gardeners, worked like niggers ourselves, and when the turf was in perfect condition and the thyme was coming up on Titania’s bank we fixed the date and billed the county.

“After that we all got nervous and went about consulting weather forecasts. Old Moore prophesied heavy rains.  The Daily Mail said a cyclone from New York was on the way.  The weather-glasses jumped about and seemed to know their own minds even less than usual.  Three days before the date thunderstorms were reported all over the country and a fowl was struck by lightning.  But not a drop of rain came to our village.

“At the dress-rehearsal the night before the performance we debated the weather prospects until the moon rose. Lysander said his bit of seaweed which he brought from Bognor was as dry as parched peas and he would back it against any fool barometer.  Cocklewhite, our prompter, said he didn’t want to depress the company, but he had a leech in a bottle of water which rose for fine weather and sank for wet, and he was bound to tell us it was like lead at the bottom at the present moment. Hermia pointed to the heavens, ‘Red sky at night shepherds’ delight,’ she quoted.  There was no getting away from the swallows; they were nose-diving to a bird.  ’Hang swallows,’ Oberon said; ’put your trust in mosquitoes.  Look at my eyelid.’