School closed on the 21st of June that year, just ten days before the expected arrival of Uncle Ed. The first thing we did was to set up our tent in the back yard and camp out so as to become acclimatized. It is good that we did this, for the very first night a heavy summer shower came up which nearly drenched us. The water beat right through the thin canvas roof of our tent. Had we been able to afford the best quality of canvas duck, such an occurrence would probably have been avoided. But we solved the difficulty by using a tent fly; that is, a strip of canvas stretched over the tent and spaced a short distance from it to break the fall of the rain drops.

Fig. 48. The Wall Tent with the Fly fastened on.