f the mischief.

The next morning at breakfast time all the trees, flowers, buds, lawns,
and hedge-rows looked soaking wet, and the rain kept pouring down,--not
so heavily, certainly, as on the previous night, but quite enough to do
away with all prospect of going out that day.

"A bad job, as there's so much hay down," said Mr Inglis; "but I think
it will be fine again to-morrow, and it will swell out the corn
beautifully."

"But how wet it will be," said Philip, "when it leaves off raining! We
shan't be able to play."

"Oh, yes, you will," said his father. "Why, boys, you ought to go down
to the mill early to-morrow morning. Old Peagrim will have had the
fish-traps open to-night, for the river will be flooded, and then you
will be able to see some sport,--that is if it leaves off raining."

"Oh! that will be capital," said Harry; who then had to enter into a
long dissertation, explaining to Fred what a fish-trap was; and how
watermills went round; and which was the dam, and the tail, and the
waste-water, and all the rest of it. After this they helped the Squire
to arrange his cabinet of birds' eggs; and Fred learned the difference
between sparrows' eggs, and finches', and tits', and larks', etc, from
the tiniest tom-tit's egg right up to that of the wild swan, which had
been known to breed in the marsh, five miles from Hollowdell; and so
interested did the boys get with the work they had in hand, that the
dinner-bell rang before they could believe it was more than half-past
eleven.

After dinner there was the vivarium to clean out in the conservatory;
and a nice job it was, for there were the globes and glass jars to bring
full of clean water, and the gold fish to catch with the little net, and
to place in the globes; all of which duties Mr Inglis set the boys to
do, while he superintended. Then there was the syphon to draw all the
water off into the pails, which Sam had to come and empty; and this
syphon puzzled Fred a great deal, for he could not understand how the
water could run up, and then down the other side.

"Well, but," said Mr Inglis, "have you not learnt that at school in
your lessons on physics? Do you not know that it is by atmospheric
pressure; the air being exhausted from the pipe, the water is forced
through?"

Fred said he had learned all these things, but never understood them
well. And then, when the water was all drawn off, there was no end of
little, things to pop into the glass