PAGE 8
The Water-Works
by
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.
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 water had washed it away, for they put wires down, and the pipe was quite clear.
While we were being told this Oswald’s trembling fingers felt at the wet cricket-ball in his pocket. And he knew, but he could not tell. He heard them wondering what the obstruction could have been, and all the time he had the obstruction in his pocket, and never said a single word.
I do not seek to defend him. But it really was an awful thing to have been the cause of; and Mrs. Pettigrew is but harsh and hasty. But this, as Oswald knows too well, is no excuse for his silent conduct.
That night at tea Albert’s uncle was rather silent too. At last he looked upon us with a glance full of intelligence, and said:
“There was a queer thing happened yesterday. You know there was an angling competition. The pen was kept full on purpose. Some mischievous busybody went and opened the sluices and let all the water out. The anglers’ holiday was spoiled. No, the rain wouldn’t have spoiled it anyhow, Alice; anglers like rain. The ‘Rose and Crown’ dinner was half of it wasted because the anglers were so furious that a lot of them took the next train to town. And this is the worst of all–a barge, that was on the mud in the pen below, was lifted and jammed across the river, and then the water tilted her over, and her cargo is on the river bottom. It was coals.”
During this speech there were four of us who knew not where to turn our agitated glances. Some of us tried bread and butter, but it seemed dry and difficult, and those who tried tea choked and spluttered and were sorry they had not let it alone.
When the speech stopped Alice said, “It was us.”
And with deepest feelings she and the rest of us told all about it. Oswald did not say much. He was turning the obstruction round and round in his pocket, and wishing with all his sentiments that he had owned up like a man when Albert’s uncle asked him before tea to tell him all about what had happened during the night.
When they had told all, Albert’s uncle told us four still more plainly, and exactly, what we had done, and how much pleasure we had spoiled, and how much of my father’s money we had wasted–because he would have to pay for the coals being got up from the bottom of the river, if they could be, and if not, for the price of the coals. And we saw it all.
And when he had done Alice burst out crying over her plate and said:
“It’s no use! We have tried to be good since we’ve been down here. You don’t know how we’ve tried! And it’s all no use. I believe we are the wickedest children in the whole world, and I wish we were all dead!”