"What you want to let it drown for?
Anyways, we got to use this water in our house, haven't we?
You don't s'pose people like to use water that's got a cat drowned in it, do you?
It gets pumped up into the tank in the attic and goes all over the house, and I bet you wouldn't want to see your father and mother usin' water a cat was drowned in.

I guess I don't want my father and moth--" "Well, how CAN we get it out ?" Sam asked, cutting short this virtuous oration.

"It's swimmin' around down there," he continued, peering into the cistern, "and kind of roaring, and it must of dropped its fishbone, 'cause it's spittin' just awful.

I guess maybe it's mad 'cause it fell in there." "I don't know how it's goin' to be got out," said Penrod; "but I know it's GOT to be got out, and that's all there is to it! I'm not goin' to have my father and mother--" "Well, once," said Sam, "once when a kitten fell down OUR cistern, Papa took a pair of his trousers, and he held 'em by the end of one leg, and let 'em hang down through the hole till the end of the other leg was in the water, and the kitten went and clawed hold of it, and he pulled it right up, easy as anything.

Well, that's the way to do now, 'cause if a kitten could keep hold of a pair of trousers, I guess this ole cat could.