"I want to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as stay in Crofield."
He suddenly sprang up and shook off his blues, exclaiming: "I'll go and see the freshet, anyhow!"
He carried the eggs into the house.
All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very particularly about the Crofield Academy.
"I don't wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for 'most a month each time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that they didn't like it when they found it out."
The gutter in front of the house had now become a small torrent.
"All the other gutters are just like that," said Jack. "So are the brooks all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!"
"Father," said Jack, after supper, "I'm going down to the creek."
"I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it's looking."
"Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch.