"What in the world are you looking for, anyway?" Ken asked, watching me frantically root through the ironing basket.

     "A skirt. Any skirt! I'm due at the school in twenty minutes and I can't find a thing to wear!" I howled.

     "Oh, for heaven's sake. What are they going to do if you show up in pants for a day? Stone you?" He had no problem with women wearing pants if they wanted to and had never quite understood the school's insistence that I wear a skirt. We agreed to keep our daughter in dresses when she was accepted at Elliott Prairie, a small, rural, Mennonite school close to our home. It accommodated grades one through twelve and a total of 31 students. We felt the Christian environment and the personal attention Sarah would receive more than offset any need for dresses. Girls only wore dresses when Ken and I were in school so it was an easy agreement. Besides, we were conservative Christians and shared much of the philosophy of the school and its sponsoring church. The school had a "homey" atmosphere that was wonderful: the children of all grades joined each other for softball games at recess; the older students took an active interest in the little ones and helped them with their studies, their memory verses and their coats. It was almost like being in a large and loving family.

     As times became financially difficult for us, though, even the small tuition became impossible . . . particularly as we prepared to send daughter number two off to first grade. When the school offered me a part-time position as janitor to offset the cost of tuition for one child, I jumped at the opportunity. Part of the agreement, however, was that I would uphold their dress code while at the school.

     I grabbed a cotton dirndl and turned on the iron. Cotton would be cool for this rainy, November day, but I didn't have time to look for anything else. I didn't have a very extensive wardrobe so if my one denim skirt was in the wash, it didn't leave much. I had two wool skirts, but I considered them too dressy for mopping floors.

     I ran a brush through my hair and braided it quickly down the back. There. That ought to keep them happy. I ran to the car and was just pulling out when I noticed Ken waving frantically at me from the open door.

     "What?" I demanded, rolling down my window, "I'm late!"

     "The school just called," he yelled over the noise of the engine, "there's some kind of problem with the drainage. Brother Ron suggested you take boots." He ducked into the house and came sprinting out moments later with the rubber knee boots I wore on the farm. "Here," he opened the door and tossed my boots in the back, giving me a quick kiss before slamming the door and dashing back to the shelter of the porch.

     "Great," I thought, "just what I need. I was hoping to get home early today." When I arrived at the school, I could see there was definitely a problem. Brother Ron, the principal and high school teacher, was standing in the boys' bathroom looking worried as he surveyed the small pools of water on the floor. The rain seemed to be seeping in under the back hall door and there were other unaccountable puddles as well.

     "I'm not sure how bad it is," he said, glancing up when I entered, "but I think the water table is just too high here to absorb all this rain." The school was old and had been built on a slope with one classroom and the bathrooms at a lower level than the two main classrooms and the large entry way. He shook his head and sighed. "I don't know what we're going to do about it, but the hall definitely has to be mopped out and dried. It's just too dangerous for the children with water on the concrete. It's too slippery and although we remind them there's to be no running in the building you know how little ones are . . . if one slips, he'd surely be hurt. I just can't account for the quantity of water. There's too much for the small amount that seems to be coming in under the door. It's possible that the kids are tracking some in, I suppose, but that really doesn't explain the puddles way over there at the opposite end of the hall." His brows knit together and he pursed his lips in deep concentration. Although quite young, with a round and genial face, the expression made him appear very severe above his no-nonsense shirt collar, buttoned to the highest button in the Mennonite style.

     "I'll see what I can do . . . " I said, getting out the mop and big mop bucket with the wringer. I took off my tennies and donned the knee boots. I mopped for thirty-five minutes, emptying the bucket out in the field and tracking in mud with each trip. When the water was gone, I then cleaned up the mess from my boots. Once that task was finished, I dust mopped the classroom floors, cleaned blackboards, emptied waste baskets and washed desk tops. I admit I gave the normal cleaning a less than normal effort. I hustled my girls to the car and stopped to see Brother Ron before I left. There were neither more puddles nor additional water on the floors.

     "I think I'll come a little early tomorrow morning just to see how it's going since I don't think the rain is supposed to let up," I told him. "We may have to call in someone else to look at it if the problem doesn't get better. I don't think it's from the kids tracking in water, though."

     "Thank you," he smiled at me, obviously worried, and seemed to appreciate having someone with whom he could share his own concern. "I'll see you in the morning and we'll decide what's to be done."

     The next morning dawned raining; it had rained all night. It was not easy getting both girls and myself ready in the morning so we did not arrive at the school as early as I had planned. Most of the children were already in the building and there were large puddles of water in the lower hall again. Fortunately, I had remembered to bring my boots.

     "I can't go to the bathroom in there!" a young girl backed out of the rest room, "There's too much water!"

     "Go on to class," Brother Ron told her. "We'll let Sister Beulah know when we have the bathrooms dried out so she can excuse you." He turned to me. "Just keep me informed," he said. "My class is old enough to do some independent study if you need me." He rang the bell for classes to begin and left me to the mopping. Forty minutes later I finally had the floors cleared of water if not yet actually dry. I could see the water up to the floor level through the holes in the small, round drainage grates in the center of each bathroom.

     "Brother Ron," I poked my head in his classroom, "may I see you for a few minutes?"

     "Certainly," he responded and quickly joined me in the hall.

     "I'm afraid the water is coming up from the septic lines," I told him, indicating the water level through the grate in the middle of the boys room. "It may be that the water table is too high and not allowing them to drain properly; it may be worse. We might have to call a septic service. Do you know where the septic tank is and how big it is or when it was last pumped?" I asked.

     "I have no idea," he admitted. "Is there some way we can check for sure to see if that's where it's coming from?" He obviously had doubts.

     "Sure," I said, "just have someone flush both the toilets in the girls' bathroom at the same time and we'll see what happens."

     He stepped into his room and returned with Carolyn Smucker, a sophomore. "When I tell you, I want you to flush both toilets as rapidly as you can," he instructed her. He propped the doors open to both rooms and stepped into the boys' bathroom where I was still standing in my skirt and knee boots, leaning on my mop and pondering the drain hole. "OK, Carolyn," he called, "flush the toilets!"

     "Ka-chungggg!" the first one sounded and, moments later, "Ka-chungggg!" the second one was flushed. My worst fears were realized. As we watched, the water gushed up through the drain hole like a fountain about eight inches high and begin filling the boys' bathroom.

     "Eyie!" We saw Carolyn sprint past the open door. "The water is coming up through the drain!" she cried. I looked at the water as it rushed toward Brother Ron's feet and then swirled around them, creating little eddies in the current and lapping up over the top of his shiny black spit-shine. The expression on his face turned to one of trepidation as realization dawned, immobilizing him. We were standing in the dimly lit boys' bathroom in the middle of a cess pool with the water rising each moment. The absurdity of the situation overcame me.

     "Brother Ron," I said softly, looking at him over my mop handle, "we've simply got to stop meeting like this! What will people say?" He glanced up and stared at me blankly for several moments through his large, round glasses before his normally strict countenance contorted into a ridiculous lopsided grin and he laughed out loud.

     It was, eventually, the septic service rather than the end of the rainy season that solved our problem and we quit meeting surreptitiously in the boys' bathroom.