“What can’t you make out, Mr. Crusoe?” asked I, when the wind lulled a bit.
“Why, how it was that my grandfather wasn’t drowned out the same as we have been.”
“Perhaps it didn’t rain,” said I.
“But it did rain; for in my grandfather’s book he mentions a violent rain.”
“Then you may depend upon it that he got his house full of water, and went and built another in a better place,” I said, “only he felt ashamed to mention it.”
“Mike,” said Mr. Crusoe, “while I can’t allow you to talk in that way of my grandfather, I think you are partly right in what you say, for he did build another house, which he called his country-house, in a beautiful valley.”
“And I’ll bet you anything that he lived in his country-house all the year round, and gave up trying to live in a house right under the scuppers of a big hill the first time he found his bed all afloat.”
Mr. Crusoe didn’t answer me, so I knew he thought I was right, and after waiting a while I said,
“In the morning, Mr. Crusoe, if it stops raining, we’ll build a good, substantial plank house that will keep out the rain, and we’ll put it where the water will run off of it instead of into it. I’m sure that’s what your grandfather did when he built his country-house, and we ought to imitate him.” I just added that little remark to please Mr. Crusoe, for his grandfather must have been the worst man to imitate that ever lived. Why, a hand-organ monkey would have too much sense to imitate him.
Mr. Crusoe said that he was delighted that I was beginning to appreciate his grandfather, and that we’d build a country-house the first thing next day.