r in there. The next instant the lights were switched on in both
bathroom and dressing-room, and Carlie beheld Sam Williams in the
doorway of the former.

"Oh, look, Maurice!" Sam shouted, in frantic excitement. "Somebody's
let the tub run over, and it's about ten feet deep! Carlie Chitten's
sloshin' around in here. Let's hold the door on him and keep him in!"

Carlie rushed to prevent the execution of this project; but he slipped
and went swishing full length along the floor, creating a little surf
before him as he slid, to the demoniac happiness of Sam and Maurice.
They closed the door, however, and, as other boys rushed, shouting and
splashing, into the flooded dressing-room, Carlie began to hammer upon
the panels. Then the owners of shoes, striving to rescue them from the
increasing waters, made discoveries.

The most dangerous time to give a large children's party is when
there has not been one for a long period. The Rennsdale party had that
misfortune, and its climax was the complete and convulsive madness of
the gentlemen's dressing-room during those final moments supposed to be
given to quiet preparations, on the part of guests, for departure.

In the upper hall and upon the stairway, panic-stricken little girls
listened, wild-eyed, to the uproar that went on, while waiters and maid
servants rushed with pails and towels into what was essentially the
worst ward in Bedlam. Boys who had behaved properly all afternoon now
gave way and joined the confraternity of lunatics. The floors of the
house shook to tramplings, rushes, wrestlings, falls and collisions. The
walls resounded to chorused bellowings and roars. There were pipings
of pain and pipings of joy; there was whistling to pierce the drums of
ears; there were hootings and howlings and bleatings and screechings,
while over all bleated the heathen battle-cry incessantly: "GOTCHER
BUMPUS! GOTCHER BUMPUS!" For the boys had been inspired by the unusual
water to transform Penrod's game of "Gotcher bumpus" into an aquatic
sport, and to induce one another, by means of superior force, dexterity,
or stratagems, either to sit or to lie at full length in the flood,
after the example of Carlie Chitten.

One of the aunts Rennsdale had taken what charge she could of the
deafened and distracted maids and waiters who were working to stem the
tide, while the other of the aunts Rennsdale stood with her niece
and Miss Lowe at the foot of the stairs, trying to say good-night