TRANSCRIPT

The New Arrival
A short story from 'Pioneer Tales and Other Human Stories'
By H.B. Adshead
Part 5

We kept the woodpile full up even if we had to commandeer a dry fence pole or two. But it still rained persistently and exasperatingly, and the creek rose higher.
About 3 o'clock in the morning of August 22nd, my wife called me and told me to go for Mrs. Deans across the creek. I lit the lamp and the lantern, called my daughter and the boys. I told my daughter to stay by her mother and said to the boys: 'Boys, you keep the stove full of wood--though it's wet we can keep warm, anyway--and take a tomato can and dip the water out of the pond on the floor into a pail and throw it out of doors.' In my second story I told you that the floor had sagged because some sleepers had given away, and that this was not an unmixed evil because when it rained through the roof it made a pond about five feet across and three inches deep. It was this pond that the boys were dipping out. Later I wondered why the boys were not dipping, and I found that one of the boys had got tired of dipping and found an easier way. He got an inch bit and bored a hole in the lowest spot and all the water ran through the hole into the dugout we called the cellar. That disposed of the water on the floor.