THE WOULDBEGOODS
an awful fuss and said it was our fault. We told her what we thought, and it ended in the girls going in with H. O. to change his things. We had some more gooseberries while they were gone. Dora was in an awful wax when she went away, but she is not of a sullen disposition though some times hasty, and when they all came back we saw it was all right, so we said:
"What shall we do now?"
Alice said, "I don't think we need drag any more. It is wormy. I felt it when Dora did. And besides, the milk-pan is sticking a bit of itself out of the water. I saw it through the dairy window."
"Couldn't we get it up with fish-hooks?" Noël said. But Alice explained that the dairy was now locked up and the key taken out.
So then Oswald said:
"Look here, we'll make a raft. We should have to do it some time, and we might as well do it now. I saw an old door in that corner stable that they don't use. You know. The one where they chop the wood."
We got the door.
We had never made a raft, any of us, but the way to make rafts is better described in books, so we knew what to do.
We found some nice little tubs stuck up on the fence of the farm garden, and nobody seemed to want them for anything just then, so we took them. Denny had a box of tools some one had given him for his last birthday; they were rather rotten little things, but the gimlet worked all
36
