But it was not raining so hard now.  The storm seemed to be about over.  The water was going down, Mr. Brown said, and when Bunny, at the breakfast table, asked how his father knew, Mr. Brown pointed to a fence not far from the tree to which they were tied.

“Do you see the muddy marks and the bits of leaves and grass caught on the fence?” asked Mr. Brown.

“I see,” said Bunny.

“Well, that shows how high the water got,” explained his father.  “You see the top of the water is below that now, which shows that the flood is going down.  And I am glad enough of it.”

“So am I,” said Mrs. Brown.  “We’ve had water enough for once.”

The storm had been such a heavy one that it could not last long, and by noon the sun was out.  But it would take some time for the flood to go down and the roads to dry up.

“We’ll probably stay here three days,” said Mr. Brown.  “It looks like a nice place, and we have plenty to eat.  We’ll stay and let things dry out.  Traveling on a muddy, slippery road, with a heavy automobile like this, is not safe.  We’ll wait a while.”

Anything suited Bunny and Sue as long as they were seeing or having something new.  And when the rain stopped their mother let them put on their rubber boots and wade where the water was not too deep.

After wading about awhile, Bunny thought of something to do.

“Let’s make a raft!” he said to Sue.

“Oh, that will be fun!” she cried.

Sue knew what a raft was from living near the seashore.  Many times she and her brother had made them, and they had often heard stories of sailors coming ashore from wrecks on rafts.  Rafts are flat boards, or planks, nailed or tied together, and they will float on top of the water and carry a number of people, though they are so low that the water washes over them and wets one’s feet.

This last part Bunny and Sue did not mind, for they had on rubber boots.  They quickly made a raft by collecting some boards and logs that had come down with the flood, and had caught in the fence corner near which their auto was anchored.

Uncle Tad helped them nail the boards together, and then Bunny and Sue floated the raft over into a little rain-water lake in the middle of a field and began shoving it about with long poles.  They had ridden up and down one side of the little lake, stopping at places on the “shore,” to which they gave the names of sea-coast towns near their home.

“Now we’ll go across to the other side,” said Sue.

But when she and Bunny had the raft about in the middle of the “lake,” it stuck fast, because the water was not deep enough just there.

“Push!” cried Bunny.  “Push hard, Sue!”

Sue pushed so hard that, all of a sudden, her pole broke, and she fell off the raft into the water.

“Oh dear!” she cried.  “Oh dear!”

For a moment Bunny did not know what to do.  Then he saw that the water was not more than up to Sue’s knees and he knew she would not drown.  But, as she had fallen in backwards, she was wet from top to toe.  Sue began to cry as she got up, choking and gasping, for she had swallowed a little water.