filled their
pockets; and even one of the boys was planning a quill popgun for sliced
potato, such as the worst boys had not dreamed of all summer. He was a
bad boy from the Meadow.

"Well, Mr. Dyer!" said Mrs. Dyer, all day, and again when he came home
at night.

Of course the Spinville people thought a great deal from this time of
Mr. Dyer; and there was a town council held to consider what they should
do to express their feelings to him. He had declined six times being
made selectman, and he did not want to ring the bell as sexton. There
did not seem to be anything in the way of an office they could offer him
that he would accept.

At last Mr. Jones suggested that the best way to please the father was
to give something to the son. "Something for Jedidiah!" exclaimed Mr.
Jones. "The next time I go to New York, I'll go to a toy-shop; I'll buy
something for Jedidiah."

So he did. He came home with the Noah's Ark. It was a moderate-sized
ark, painted blue, as usual, with red streaks, and a slanting roof, held
down with a crooked wire. It was brought to Jedidiah, one evening, just
as he was going to bed; so the crooked wire was not lifted, for Mrs.
Dyer thought he had better go to bed at his time and get up early and
look at his ark. But he could not sleep well, thinking of his ark. It
stood by his bedside, and all night long he heard a great racket inside
of it. There was a roaring and a grunting and a squeaking,--all kinds of
strange noises. In the moonlight he thought he saw the roof move; if the
wire had not been so crooked it surely would have opened. But it didn't,
not till he took it downstairs, and Mrs. Dyer had got out her
ironing-board, that the animals might be spread out upon it; then
Jedidiah lifted the roof.

What a commotion there was then! The elephant on the top, and his trunk
stretched out; in a minute or two he would have unfastened the wire; the
giraffe's long neck was stretched out; one dove flew away directly, and
some crows sat on the eaves. Mr. and Mrs. Dyer and Jedidiah started
back, while the elephant with his trunk helped out some of the smaller
animals, who stepped into rows on the ironing-board as fast as they were
taken out.

The cows were mooing, the cats mewing, the dogs barking, the pigs
grunting. Presently Noah's head appeared, and he looked round for his
wife; and then came Shem and Ham and Japheth with their wives. They
helped out some of the birds,--white, with brown spots,--ge