Charlie and His Puppy Bingo

by Helen Hill; Violet Maxwell

Charlie was very much interested when he heard this. He said to his Mother, “Can anybody build a dam?”

And of course his Mother said that anybody could. She said that you only had to heap a lot of mud and stones together just below where you wanted the pool to be, and just as high as you wanted the pool to be deep.

Oh, my goodness! Charlie was excited then. I wonder if you can guess what he said?

I will tell you. Charlie said, “Mother, Auntie, I want to go home im-me-di-ate-ly, I AM GOING TO BUILD A DAM! Yes, I am going to build a dam across the brook and make a great ENORMOUS pool to sail my boat in.” Of course his Mother and his Auntie said they would go home immediately when they heard that Charlie was going to do such an important thing.

So they did go home, and Charlie put on his overalls and he ran down to the brook and began to work at his dam.

First he found a place where the brook was a little wider and where the banks were quite steep. Then he started scooping out the stones at the bottom of the brook, so that there would be no rocks for his boat to get wrecked on.

You may be sure that Bingo and Topsy were very much interested in what Charlie was doing. Yes, they both came and watched him awhile. Then Topsy began to dig a hole in the grass—he wanted to show that he could dig a hole just as well as Charlie could. Bingo tried to dig a hole, too, but he soon got tired of it and ran around and barked, “Yap, yap!” He wanted Charlie and Topsy to come and play with him.

But Charlie was much too busy to pay any attention to Bingo. He just went on bending over the brook, digging out the stones until he had the bottom of the brook, where his pool was going to be, nicely cleaned out. Then he started to work on the dam.

First Charlie hunted around until he had got together a nice lot of flat stones, and he began to pile them up one on top of the other, and he went on piling them up until the dam went right across the brook from bank to bank.

At first the water paid no attention to Charlie’s dam at all. It just went on flowing through the chinks between the stones, just as if there were not any dam there at all! But Charlie piled up great banks of mud, and put in more big stones and then little stones to fill the chinks—and at last the water began to rise!