"What for?" Bert said; "there's nothing but puddles at the bottom. How would you ever get out?"
"Couldn't we drop one of those saplings into it and I could shin up that?" I said. Because I saw two or three saplings lying around. I suppose they blew down in the storms lately.
"What would be the use?" he asked; "you can see what's down there. If we're going to get those letters onto a mail train, we've got to hustle."
That was enough for me, because I cared more about Skinny than I did about all the old creek bottoms and holes in the ground this side of Jericho. So I just said, "Righto," and we started following the old creek bed, till pretty soon the bushes were so thick that we hit up north of it a little ways and hiked straight over to the houseboat.
When we got to the house-boat we lowered the skiff and rowed across to Catskill and mailed the letters. Then we went up the street for a couple of sodas. Bert bought some peanut brittle, too—I'm crazy about that. Then we went to another store and got some post cards. Some of them had pictures of Temple Camp on them. I sent home about six. All the while it was getting dark and pretty soon it began to rain, so I said, "Let's go and get a couple more sodas till it holds up." We drank two sodas each, but even still it didn't hold up.
"We can't make it hold up that way," Bert said; "I don't believe twenty sodas would do it, the way it's raining now."
"I guess you're right," I said, "but, anyway, I'm willing to try twenty, if you say so."
No fellow could ever say I was a quitter.