Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/268

 244  told you you'd better take your time about it, but no"

"You know very well, James Milligan," snapped the irate lady, "that the Knapps wouldn't have taken our house if they couldn't have had it at once."

"Well, I don't know," growled Mr. Milligan, scowling crossly at the constantly growing heaps of incongruously mixed household goods, "where in Sam Hill you're going to put all that stuff. There isn't room for a cat to turn around and the place ain't fit to live in, anyway."

Bad as things looked, even Mr. Milligan did not guess that first busy day, how hopelessly out of repair the cottage really was; but he was soon to find out.

The summer had been an unusually dry one; so dry that the girls had been obliged to carry many pails of water to their garden every evening. The moving-day had been cloudy—out of sympathy, perhaps, for the little cottagers. That night it rained, the