The first thing was to rouse the unconscious others from their deep sleep, because the water was beginning to drip on to their beds, and though as yet they knew it not, there was quite a pool on Noel’s bed, just in the hollow behind where his knees were doubled up, and one of H. O.‘s boots was full of water, that surged wildly out when Oswald happened to kick it over.
We woke them—a difficult task, but we did not shrink from it.
Then we said, ‘Get up, there is a flood! Wake up, or you will be drowned in your beds! And it’s half past two by Oswald’s watch.’
They awoke slowly and very stupidly. H. O. was the slowest and stupidest.
The water poured faster and faster from the ceiling.
We looked at each other and turned pale, and Noel said—
‘Hadn’t we better call Mrs Pettigrew?’
But Oswald simply couldn’t consent to this. He could not get rid of the feeling that this was our fault somehow for meddling with the river, though of course the clear star of reason told him it could not possibly be the case.
We all devoted ourselves, heart and soul, to the work before us. We put the bath under the worst and wettest place, and the jugs and basins under lesser streams, and we moved the beds away to the dry end of the room. Ours is a long attic that runs right across the house.
But the water kept coming in worse and worse. Our nightshirts were wet through, so we got into our other shirts and knickerbockers, but preserved bareness in our feet. And the floor kept on being half an inch deep in water, however much we mopped it up.