t away, but she is
not of a sullen disposition though sometimes 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?' Noel 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 someone had given him for his last birthday;
they were rather rotten little things, but the gimlet worked all right,
so we managed to make holes in the edges of the tubs and fasten them
with string under the four corners of the old door. This took us a long
time. Albert's uncle asked us at dinner what we had been playing at, and
we said it was a secret, and it was nothing wrong. You see we wished to
atone for Dicky's mistake before anything more was said. The house has
no windows in the side that faces the orchard.

The rays of the afternoon sun were beaming along the orchard grass when
at last we launched the raft. She floated out beyond reach with the last
shove of the launching. But Oswald waded out and towed her back; he is
not afraid of worms. Yet if he had known of the other things that were
in the bottom of that moat he would have kept his boots on. So would the
others, especially Dora, as you will see.

At last the gallant craft rode upon the waves. We manned her, though not
up to our full strength, because if more than four got on the water came
up too near our knees, and we feared she might founder if over-manned.

Daisy and Denny did not want to go on the raft, white mice that they
were, so that was all right. And as H. O. had been wet through once he
was not very keen. Alice promised Noel her best paint-brush if he'd give
up and not go, because we knew well that the voyage was fraught with
deep