"Why, good gracious me!" he cried in distress.
"What's the matter now ?" asked Cap'n Bill.
"Someone has pushed the earth in! Don't you see it?
"It isn't pushed in far enough to hurt anything," said Trot, examining the footprints.
"Everything hurts that isn't right," insisted the man.

"If the earth were pushed in a mile, it would be a great calamity, wouldn't it ?" "I s'pose so," admitted the little girl.
"Well, here it is pushed in a full inch! That's a twelfth of a foot, or a little more than a millionth part of a mile.

Therefore it is one-millionth part of a calamity--Oh, dear! How dreadful!" said Pessim in a wailing voice.
"Try to forget it, sir," advised Cap'n Bill, soothingly.

"It's beginning to rain.

Let's get under your shed and keep dry." "Raining! Is it really raining ?" asked Pessim, beginning to weep.
"It is," answered Cap'n Bill, as the drops began to descend, "and I don't see any way to stop it--although I'm some observer myself." "No; we can't stop it, I fear," said the man.