Well, thank goodness that's over. We finally ran out of dry socks, and when Maggie tried to help dry them out, she kept accidently burning through the clothesline, which dropped them into a mud puddle, and then we had to wash them out and start all over again. After the third time, Aunt Teresa asked if perhaps Maggie would help dry out the turtle colony instead, so that we could move the turtles out of the pantry. (They've been living there since the flood started, and Aunt Melba, who's been doing the cooking while Cook is away with my parents, keeps looking at them like she wants to make them into soup.)
I think Maggie was relieved at the request, because you could just see how badly she felt when the socks hit the mud for the third time. It wasn't really her fault - after all, dragons weren't designed to have fine control over their flaming abilities. They're more of a "big picture" species. So, she moved over to turtle territory, and we washed out the socks. Again.
After that, it was either run around barefoot, or make more socks. Three of my uncles set to work around the hearth in the Great Room, their needles clicking and sliding and whishing until it sounded like a small cloud of insects had descended to warm themselves in front of the fire.
I'm hopeless with knitting needles. I keep poking my fingers, and dropping stitches, and getting my yarn tangled up in knots, and everything takes me five times as long as it should. I'm pretty good at crochet, but for some reason no one seems to have figured out a pattern for crocheting socks...
While the uncles were knitting, one of the plumbers finally staggered downstairs to the dungeon to assess the situation. He staggered back upstairs an hour later, looking rather like death warmed over, and we immediately hustled him back to his bed and fed him soup. The upshot of his inspection seems to be, someone has been trying to dig a new tunnel down there, and dug a little too close to the moat, so when the rain raised the level of water in the moat, the excess happily poured through the new digging, which eroded a whole section of foundation, and we're lucky the entire castle didn't collapse with a mightly splash.
Earnest took this very personally (after all, it will be his castle someday), and commenced a Grand Inquisition of all the siblings and cousins. I think he would have questioned the aunts and uncles as well, if Uncle Theodore hadn't sternly suggested that questioning his elders about a tunnel only large enough for a small child or two was not only impertinent, but silly.
Earnest went off to the Royal Study in a bit of bad temper. Uncle Theodore had a quiet word with Fergus, who is much more likely to ferret out the culprit than my brother, and no doubt the whole matter will be cleared up by the morrow. In the meantime, I am curled up in my pajamas and a new pair of dry socks, toasting myself against Maggie's warm (if scaly) side, and toasting marshmallows in the heat of her snores. Life is good.