“Why don’t you go on, Tom? You haven’t told us yet what you found in the hut.”
“I’m thirsty,” answered the boy. “Speaking is dry work, as you know, if you ever read Hawthorn’s ‘A Rill from the Town Pump!’ Have we enough water in the spring, Cal, for me to waste it in slaking my thirst?”
“We’ve caught all our things full, I reckon. I’ll see.”
When Cal returned he brought with him a small supply of rain water.
“What made you so long about it, Cal?” asked Larry. “We’re all waiting for you.”
“So I see,” answered Cal. “I make all required apologies for having kept this distinguished company waiting while I attended to some matters that are even more vitally interesting to all of us than is Tom’s promised inventory of the things discovered by him in the tents of the wicked, if I may so designate a slab hovel in a cane brake.”
“What have you been doing, Cal? And why didn’t you call the rest of us to help you?” asked Dick, whose New England conscience was apt to scourge his spirit if he thought he had been doing less than his share of whatever there was to do.
“I’ll reply to your questions in inverse order,” Cal replied. “I did not call for help because I did not need help. In what I had to do one person was as good as a dozen. I may have been a trifle slow about it, but that is chiefly because water won’t run through a hole faster than nature intended it to do. As for your other question, I’ve been engaged in a job of water-supply engineering. All the receptacles I set to catch water were nearly full, and as it still rains—a fact that you may have observed for yourselves—I thought it best to empty their contents into the water kegs and set them to catch more. As nobody thought to bring a funnel along, I have had to resort to simpler methods, and I have found that it is by no means easy to pour water from a four-gallon bait pail into a one-inch bung hole without spilling it. For the rest, Captain Larry, I beg to report that one of our water kegs is now full and the other perhaps one-third full. I hope to catch enough more water before the rain ceases to finish filling that keg and to serve all camp purposes during the few hours that we shall probably remain here.”
“Why, I should think we might stay as long as we like, now,” said Tom; “this rain must have filled up our spring.”
“It has, and it has spoiled it for use for many days to come.”