THE WATER CARNIVAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 109, 10 May 1941, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE WATER CARNIVAL.

Jimmy and Joan Dent suggested a Saturday afternoon water carnival, and all their boy and girl neighbours were very taken with the plan. Everybody contributed some pocket money for prizes for the best nTcssing-up scheme and for the races. The dtessing-up prize was a sixpence, and was to be settled by voting at the end of the fun. And there was some fun. too! It started as soon as tlie competitors began to arrive. There were Jack Tar--, pirates and smugglers, fishermen and even an admiral with a cardboard three-corner hat and paper uniform: and they all brought baths, boxes or buckets in which to enter for races on the shallow stream that ran through the village. Such a noise was going on in the meadow that it was a wonder the revellers heard anything else around them, but suddenly Joan shouted: "Quiet, everybody! What's that?" No sooner had all the boys and girls heard the screams in the distance than round a bushy banked bend of the stream whirled what looked like a raft, with two queerlooking objects squatting on it. "What on earth are they?" bawled Jimmy, and away went all the baths, boxes and buckets, paddled fast by their curious owners, who soon formed a staring cluster round what proved to be an old chicken house door and two small children who were scared half out of their wits. "We were pretending to be water sprites on a raft and it carried us away." one explained. "Mummy will think we are drowned." wailed the other. The carnival revellers roared with laughter at the comical little figures, hung with trails of waterweed and holding bulrush wands; but only for a minute, and then they did their best, to comfort the frightened pair. "I think they've beaten us all at dressing up, don't you?" cried Joan, with a meaning look at her friends. "Rather! Come on, kiddies. There's a shiny sixpence waiting for you," cried one of them, backing her up. Two pennies supplied by Mrs. Dent went on a telephone call to the next village, from which the winners had drifted, and when they had been fetched by a greatly relieved daddy, after a carnival supper, Joan said: •That settled the first prize beautifully. It would have been a frightful job voting, for the ideas were all so good. And noboby was jealous of those two funny little sprites having the sixpence."