se fancy kind, with a hood top
over the posts, like the roof of a summer-house, when the sprinkler was
turned on in earnest. Woodie was gettin' rain-drops on his new uniform,
and he didn't like it.

"I'll stay here," says he, and bolts under cover.

The Incubator kids swings like they was on a pivot, and piles in after
him. There wasn't anything to do then but stop under the gate, seein' as
the club-house was a hundred yards or so off. I snaked Woodie out,
though, and made him help me range the youngsters under the middle of
the roof; and when we'd got 'em packed in four deep, with Sadie squeezed
in too, there wa'n't an inch of room for either of us left.

And was it rainin'? Wow! You'd thought four eights had been rung in and
all the water-towers in New York was turned loose on us. And the thunder
kept rippin' and roarin', and the chain-lightnin' streaked things up
like the finish of one of Colonel Pain's exhibits.

"Sing to them!" shouts Sadie. "It's the only way to keep them from being
scared to death. Sing!"

"Do you hear that, Woodie?" says I across the top of their heads. "Sing
to 'em, you lobster!"

The Captain was standing just on the other side of the bunch. He'd got
the front half of him under cover, but there wasn't room for the rest;
so it didn't do him much good, for the roof eaves was leakin' down the
back of his neck at the rate of a gallon a minute.

"Only fu-fu-fawncy!" says he. "I don't fu-feel like singing, y'know."

"Make a noise like you did then," says I. "Come on, now!"

"But really, I cawn't," says he. "I n-never sing, y'know."

Say, that gave me the backache. "See here, Woodie," says I, lookin' as
wicked as I knew how, "you sing or there'll be trouble! Hit 'er up,
now!"

That fetched him. He opened his face like he'd swallowed something
bitter, made one or two false starts, and strikes up "God save the
King." I didn't know the words to that, so I makes a stab at "Everybody
Works but Father," and Sadie tackles somethin' else.

For a trio that was the limit. The kids hadn't seemed to mind the
thunder and lightnin' a whole lot, but when that three-cornered symphony
of ours cut loose they begins to look wild. Some of 'em was diggin'
their fists into their eyes and preparin' to leak brine, when all of a
sudden Woodie gets into his stride and lets go of three or four notes
that sounded as if they might belong together.

That seemed to cheer those youngsters up a lot. One or two pipes up