o gas but to go on mopping. And he did. And we all
did.

But more and more water came pouring down. You would not believe so much
could come off one roof.

When at last it was agreed that Mrs. Pettigrew must be awakened at all
hazards, we went and woke Alice to do the fatal errand.

When she came back, with Mrs. Pettigrew in a night-cap and a red flannel
petticoat, we held our breath.

But Mrs. Pettigrew did not even say, "What on earth have you children
been up to _now_?" as Oswald had feared.

She simply sat down on my bed and said:

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!" ever so many times.

Then Denny said, "I once saw holes in a cottage roof. The man told me it
was done when the water came through the thatch. He said if the water
lies all about on the top of the ceiling it breaks it down, but if you
make holes the water will only come through the holes and you can put
pails under the holes to catch it."

So we made nine holes in the ceiling with the poker, and put pails,
baths, and tubs under, and now there was not so much water on the floor.
But we had to keep on working like niggers, and Mrs. Pettigrew and Alice
worked the same.

About five in the morning the rain stopped; about seven the water did
not come in so fast, and presently it only dripped slowly. Our task was
done.

This is the only time I was ever up all night. I wish it happened
oftener. We did not go back to bed then, but dressed and went down. We
all went to sleep in the afternoon, though. Quite without meaning to.

Oswald went up on the roof, before breakfast, to see if he could find
the hole where the rain had come in. He did not find any hole, but he
found the cricket-ball jammed in the top of a gutter-pipe, which he
afterwards knew ran down inside the wall of the house and ran into the
moat below. It seems a silly dodge, but so it was.

[Illustration: "'OH, DEAR! OH, DEAR!'"]

When the men went up after breakfast to see what had caused the flood
they said there must have been a good half-foot of water on the leads
the night before for it to have risen high enough to go above the edge
of the lead, and of course when it got above the lead there was nothing
to stop it running down under it, and soaking through the ceiling. The
parapet and the roofs kept it from tumbling off down the sides of the
house in the natural way. They said there must have been some
obstruction in the pipe which ran down into the house, but whatever it
was the wate