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Environmental Health Engineering
in the Tropics
This fully updated third edition of the classic text, widely cited as the most
important and useful book for health engineering and disease prevention,
describes infectious diseases in tropical and developing countries, and the
measures that may be used effectively against them.
The infections described include the diarrhoeal diseases, the common gut
worms, Guinea worm, schistosomiasis, malaria, Bancroftian filariasis and other
mosquito- borne infections. The environmental interventions that receive
most attention are domestic water supplies and improved excreta disposal.
Appropriate technology for these interventions, and also their impact on infec-
tious diseases, are documented in detail.
This third edition includes new sections on arsenic in groundwater supplies
and arsenic removal technologies, and new material in most chapters, including
water supplies in developing countries and surface water drainage.
Third edition
Sandy Cairncross and
Sir Richard Feachem
Third edition published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Sandy Cairncross and Richard Feachem
The right of Sandy Cairncross and Richard Feachem to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1983
Second edition published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1993
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cairncross, Sandy, author. | Feachem, Richard G., 1947– author.
Title: Environmental health engineering in the tropics : water, sanitation
and disease control / Sandy Cairncross and Sir Richard Feachem.
Description: Third edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018013633 | ISBN 9781844071906 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781844071913 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315883946 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sanitary engineering–Tropical conditions. |
Sanitary engineering–Developing countries.
Classification: LCC TD126.5 .C35 2018 | DDC 628.0913–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013633
ISBN: 978-1-84407-190-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-84407-191-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-88394-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Out of House Publishing
Contents
PA RT I
H ea l t h a n d pollution 1
PA RT I I
Wa t er su p ply 59
PA RT I I I
Excreta and refuse: treatment, disposal and re-use 135
13 Composting 242
13.1 Aerobic and anaerobic composting 242
13.2 Techniques 243
13.3 Carbon/nitrogen ratio 246
13.4 Problems of composting 248
13.5 Individual composting toilets 249
PA RT I V
Envi ro n m e ntal modifications
a n d vect or-b orne diseases 261
17 Schistosomiasis 302
17.1 Introduction 302
17.2 Water supply and sanitation 306
17.3 Schistosome removal from water and wastes 308
17.4 Specific engineering and environmental methods in
schistosomiasis control 310
The word ‘tropics’ in the title of this book refers only very loosely to the hotter
regions of the world. Most hot countries are poor countries, and most poor
countries have hot climates.The particular problems of engineering and of dis-
ease which are discussed in these pages are not confined to the tropics; many
of them apply to all poor communities, whether tropical or temperate. For
example, it has become clear in recent years that environmental health in many
rural areas of Eastern Europe is no better than can be found in parts of Latin
America, or even Africa.
Environmental health engineering is an important weapon in the fight
against disease. Many of the dramatic improvements in public health in the
developed countries over the last century or so are attributable to public health
engineers, at least as much as to doctors. But these improvements have yet to
reach the vast majority of the world’s poor, who still endure the high rates of
death, disease and disability which have always been associated with poverty.
It has become increasingly apparent in recent years that these effects of pov-
erty may be alleviated without a substantial increase in a country’s per capita
income.There are now a number of countries, such as the People’s Republic of
China and Sri Lanka, where, although the per capita income remains low, such
indices of the quality of human life as the infant mortality rate, life expectancy
and rates of infection with certain parasites, have improved significantly.
Our book is concerned with engineering methods for improving the health
of the poorest sections of the world’s population. It is not the rich who suffer
from the diseases we discuss, nor is it the rich who are deprived of the envir-
onmental services and facilities documented here. The rich in a developing
country do not suffer much from schistosomiasis, their children do not fre-
quently die of diarrhoea and malnutrition, they generally drink clean water
and have hygienic excreta disposal facilities. It is the poor who suffer from these
diseases and who live in conditions of environmental squalor.
The need for this book, then, and indeed the need for the consideration of
tropical environmental health engineering as a distinct subject, derives directly
from the needs of the poor. There is no point in offering technology to the
poor which is appropriate for the rich and industrialised countries, because the
xii Preface to the first edition
poor will be unable to afford it. Nor is there any point in waiting for that dis-
tant day when per capita incomes are sufficiently high that the poor can afford
to buy the services which the citizens of North America and Europe have long
enjoyed. Instead one must try to make available to the poor improvements in
their environment and in their life style which they can afford now, and thereby
seek to improve their quality of life despite their low incomes.
An improvement in the quality of life of the poorest sections of the world’s
population rests essentially on two requirements. The first, and most important,
is political will. Without a political commitment to distribute resources equit-
ably among the population and provide for the basic needs of the poor, there
can be little prospect of change for the poorest sections of any society. If we look
at the countries in which, although poor, the majority of the population has a
relatively good quality of life, we generally find them to be countries where this
political will is strong and where it has been strong for a number of years.
The second requirement is the one to which this book is addressed. That is
the availability of the know-how and the technology to bring improvements
and facilities to the poor at a cost which they and their governments can afford.
In some fields the basic scientific and engineering understanding exists and
the technology is well tested, although often not widely used in practice. In
other fields, such as environmental methods for diarrhoeal disease control, our
understanding is less good and there is a need for fundamental scientific research
on which new technological advances can be based. It goes without saying that
this research must be poverty oriented, meaning that it must be directed at
problems which are experienced by the poor and must seek solutions which
the poor can afford.
Engineers whose work involves environmental health in a poor country rap-
idly find that they must concern themselves with a variety of issues for which
they are not traditionally trained. On the medical side, the diseases of the poor
in hot climates are very different from the diseases of the rich in temperate
climates, and public health engineers must understand these diseases if they are
to do their job properly. The economic picture, as has been said above, is also
radically different and public health engineers in a developing country must
have a fundamental grasp of the economic climate in which they are working.
Social and institutional problems are of the utmost importance, and it is neces-
sary that projects are designed in the full knowledge of the institutional and
social context in which they will be carried out. A broad range of skills and
abilities is therefore required and a high degree of interdisciplinary collabor-
ation is necessary. This collaboration is likely to require the participation of
engineers, doctors, biologists, economists, anthropologists and others. It is our
hope that this book will provide a useful introduction for those –whatever
their specialist discipline –with the will and interest to confront the problems
of environmental health in poor communities.
Sandy Cairncross
Richard Feachem
Preface to the second edition
In bringing this book up to date, I have tried to incorporate the main lessons
learned from the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade. Most
of these are not technical developments; though we have learned something
about subjects such as composting, waste re-use and small bore sewers, these do
not involve radically new techniques. Indeed the main technical advance of the
Decade has been increased recognition for the low-cost solutions which the
first edition sought to promote.
The most important lessons have concerned policy and strategies for
implementing water and sanitation programmes, and I have tried to summarise
these in Chapters 4 and 7. We have also learned to give more attention to
aspects of environmental health other than water supply and excreta disposal,
and this understanding lies behind the addition of a new chapter on drainage.
Above all, the bold assertions we made in the first edition are now supported
by much more published documentation; I have therefore overhauled the ref-
erence list at the end of each chapter to help the reader find it.
I would like to thank Ursula Blumenthal and Peter Kolsky for helpful
comments, and Mimi Khan and Caroline Smart for secretarial help. Finally,
thanks to Joy Barrett for drawing my attention to the fact that (thankfully!)
public health engineers are not all male.
Sandy Cairncross
Ouagadougou, 1993
Preface to the third edition
I had no idea when I embarked on this task that it would take so long to com-
plete. It soon became clear that every chapter needed a thorough revision, and
each revision needed a specialist peer review. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to
the reviewers, listed below. They are chiefly responsible for any improvements
in this edition –though I am responsible for any shortcomings. I would also
like to thank my publishers, Earthscan, for their steadfast faith that this edition
would ultimately appear. My family, especially my wife Lois, were patient about
the amount of time I spent away from them and generous with their own time
when my absence meant more work for them. Last but not least, my thanks
to Leo Heller and the Universidade Federal de Minas, for providing a stimu-
lating but calm environment in Belo Horizonte for a month in each of three
successive years, without which this book might still be ‘Work in Progress’.
Reviewers Chapters
Professor Val Curtis, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine 1 and 4
The late Professor Huw Tailor, University of Brighton 2 and 3
Dr Brian Skinner, University of Loughborough 5 and 6
Professor Barbara Evans, University of Leeds 7 and 9
Professor Duncan Mara, University of Leeds 8 and 10
Professor Pete Kolsky, University of North Carolina 11 and 15
Professor Andrew Cotton, University of Loughborough 12 and 13
The late Dr Jeroen Ensink, London School of Hygiene & Tropical 14 and 16
Medicine
Dr Jack Grimes, Imperial College 17
Dr Marion Jenkins, University of California at Davis All
Sandy Cairncross
newgenprepdf
Acknowledgements
This book contains a distillation of much knowledge and experience, and many
people have contributed to it in various ways. We wish to thank our colleagues
and students, past and present, many of whom may find their own ideas and
approaches in these pages. For the first edition, we were especially grateful for
the advice of David Bradley, Nicholas Greenacre, Duncan Mara,Warren Pescod,
John Pickford, Geoffrey Read, David Simpson, Brian Southgate and Graham
White. For the third edition, the help of Sue Cavill with photos, Rachel Pullan
with maps and Marion Jenkins with the final review deserves special mention.
More than anyone though, it is to the late Jeroen Ensink that I owe a debt
of gratitude; for his tireless support, for his surreptitiously slipping bureaucratic
burdens from my shoulders and for his joyful commitment to the study and
application of every field of knowledge in this book, I dedicate this edition
to him.
In memoriam,
Jeroen Ensink
(10 November 1974–29 December 2015)
Part I
1.1 Introduction
Environmental health engineering concerns engineering methods for the
improvement of the health of the population. In practice it has come to focus
especially upon domestic water supplies and excreta disposal facilities. Other
engineering interventions, such as drainage, housing and irrigation scheme
design, are also relevant in the tropics. However their impact on public health
is generally smaller, less certain and less cost-effective than investments in water
and sanitation (Cairncross et al. 2003).
One is unlikely to succeed in improving public health unless one understands
it, and in the tropics this understanding must apply chiefly to the infectious
diseases. Although most of these have now been brought under control or even
eliminated in the industrialised countries, they are still the principal cause of
ill-health among the world’s poor.
An infectious disease is one which can be transmitted from one person to
another or, sometimes, to or from an animal. All infectious diseases are caused
by living micro-organisms, such as bacteria, viruses or parasitic worms, and a
disease is transmitted by the passing of these organisms from one person’s body
to another.
During the transmission process, the organisms may be exposed to the envir-
onment, and their passage to the body of a new victim is then vulnerable
to changes in the environment. Environmental health engineering seeks to
modify the human environment in such a way to prevent or reduce the trans-
mission of infectious diseases.
Being infected is not the same as being ill. Very often, the section of the
population most involved in transmitting an infection shows little or no sign of
disease; conversely, people who are seriously ill with the disease may be of little
or no importance in its transmission. For example, when a cholera epidemic
sweeps through a community, those who show signs of cholera are only a small
minority of those who are infected with the disease. Anyone who is infected,
whether ill or not, is likely to pass it on to others.
4 Health and pollution
1. Water-borne route
Truly water-borne transmission occurs when the pathogen is in water which
is drunk by a person who may then become infected. Potentially water-borne
diseases include the classical infections, notably cholera and typhoid, but also
include a wide range of other diseases, such as infectious hepatitis, diarrhoeas
and dysenteries.
The term ‘water-borne disease’ has been, and still is, greatly abused so that
it has become almost synonymous with ‘water-related disease’. It is essential to
use the term water-borne only in the strict sense defined here.
Another source of misunderstanding has been the assumption that, because a
disease is labelled water-borne this describes its usual, or even its only means of
transmission. The preoccupation with strictly water-borne transmission has its
Table 1.1 The four types of water-related transmission route for infections and the
preventive strategies appropriate to each
Transmission route Preventive strategies
Water-borne Improve quality of drinking water
Prevent casual use of unprotected sources
Water-washed (or water-scarce) Increase quantity of water available
Improve accessibility and reliability of
domestic water supply
Improve hygiene
Water-based Reduce need for contact with infected water
Control population of aquatic hosts (e.g. snails)
Reduce contamination of surface waters*
Water-related insect vector Improve surface water management
Destroy breeding sites of insects
Reduce need to visit breeding sites
Use mosquito netting
* The preventive strategies appropriate to the water-based worms depend on the precise
life cycle of each species.
2. Water-washed route
There are many infections of the intestinal tract and of the skin which, especially
in the tropics, may be significantly reduced following improvements in domestic
and personal hygiene.These improvements in hygiene often result from increased
availability of water allowing the use of increased volumes of water for hygienic
purposes. Their transmission can be described as ‘water-washed’; it depends on
the quantity of water used, rather than the quality.The relevance of water to these
diseases is that it is an aid to hygiene and cleanliness, and its quality is relatively
unimportant. A water-washed disease may be formally defined as one whose
transmission will be reduced following an increase in the volume of water used for
hygienic purposes, irrespective of the quality of that water.
Water-washed diseases are of three main types. First, there are infections of
the intestinal tract, such as diarrhoeal diseases, which are important causes of ser-
ious illness and death especially among young children in poor countries. These
include cholera, bacillary dysentery and other diseases previously mentioned
under the water-borne route.These diseases are all transmitted by the faecal–oral
6 Health and pollution
route; that is, by the pathogen passing out in the faeces of an infected person
and subsequently being swallowed by someone else. A faecal–oral disease can be
transmitted either by a truly water-borne route or by many other faecal–oral
routes, in which case it is probably susceptible to hygiene improvements and is
therefore water-washed. A number of investigations have shown that diarrhoeal
diseases, especially bacillary dysentery (shigellosis), were associated with a lack
of conveniently available water, a small volume of water used or failure to wash
hands (Figure 1.1), but not significantly with the microbiological quality of the
water (Khan 1982, Curtis and Cairncross 2003, Chompook et al. 2006). The
conclusion is that these diarrhoeal diseases, although potentially water-borne,
were in fact primarily water-washed in the communities studied, and were
mainly transmitted by faecal–oral routes which did not involve drinking water
as a vehicle. Figure 1.2 illustrates the complexity of those routes and Figure 1.3
shows their importance as a global health problem.
The second type of water-washed infection is that of the skin or eyes. Bacterial
skin infections such as impetigo and fungal infections of the skin are prevalent in
many hot climates, while eye infections such as trachoma are also common and
may lead to blindness. These infections are sometimes related to poor hygiene
and they are likely to be reduced by increasing the volume of water used for
personal hygiene.4 However, they are quite distinct from the intestinal water-
washed infections because they are not faecal–oral and cannot be water-borne.
They therefore relate primarily to water quantity, not to water quality.
The third type of water-washed infection also can never be water-borne.
Infections carried by lice may be reduced by improving personal hygiene and
thus reducing the probability of infestation of the body and clothes with these
arthropods. Louse-borne epidemic typhus (due to infection by Rickettsia prowazeki)
4 It is sometimes suggested that scabies is water-washed, but the evidence for this is not conclusive.
However it does seem to be associated with overcrowded housing conditions (see Section 1.3).
Water quality
Fluids
Sanitation
Fields
Food New host
Faeces
Flies
Fomites
Hand washing
Figure 1.2 The F- diagram, illustrating the many possible transmission routes for
faecal–oral infections (shown here as arrows) and the role of water, sani-
tation and hygiene in preventing transmission. Fomites are objects such as
utensils or bedding which become contaminated and so serve as vehicles
for pathogenic organisms.
Europe
Americas
2000 2013
Western Pacific
Eastern Mediterranean
SE Asia
Africa
Figure 1.3 Diarrhoeal diseases kill millions of people, especially young children in low
income countries. In recent decades, the global death rate from diarrhoea
has been reduced significantly, mainly through improved case management,
particularly by oral rehydration. This involves encouraging the patient to
drink a solution of sugar and salt, or other available fluids.
Source: WHO.
8 Health and pollution
is mainly transmitted by body lice, which cannot persist on people who regu-
larly launder their clothes. (Note that these are not the same as head lice.) Louse-
borne relapsing fever (due to infection by a spirochaete, Borrelia recurrentis) may
also respond to changes in hygiene linked to increased use of water for washing
(see Chapter 15).
3. Water-based route
A water-based disease is one whose pathogen spends a part of its life cycle in
a water snail or other aquatic animal. All these diseases are due to infection by
parasitic worms (helminths) which depend on aquatic intermediate hosts to
complete their life cycles. The degree of sickness depends upon the number
of adult worms which are infecting the patient and so the importance of the
disease must be measured in terms of the intensity of infection as well as the
number of people infected. An important example is schistosomiasis. Water,
polluted by excreta, may contain aquatic snails in which the schistosome worms
develop until they are shed into the water as infective cercariae and re-infect
humans through the skin (see Chapter 17).
Another water- based disease is Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis,
Figure 1.4), which has a unique transmission route. The mature female worm
releases hundreds of thousands of microscopic larvae from a painful blister, usu-
ally on the leg of the human host. If, when the blister bursts, these are washed
into a pond or shallow well, they are eaten by tiny crustaceans called cyclopoids,
which then become infected. Cyclopoids are only 0.8 mm long and so are
easily consumed inadvertently in water from an infected pond or well. Any
Dracunculus worms they contain will develop further in the human host and any
fertilised female worm will make her way to the legs and form a new blister a
year later, ready to start a new cycle.
Provision of safe water supplies is the primary measure to control the disease,
especially in large communities. When the annual incidence is less than 10%,
most of the cases are likely to be caused by casual use of infected water sources
away from the home while working in the fields, visiting or travelling. In such
cases, or in very small villages where safe water supplies are not yet affordable,
the inhabitants must be encouraged to filter their drinking water through a
cloth to remove the cyclopoids and to ensure that people with blisters do not
enter ponds used for drinking water.
The complete eradication of Guinea worm disease has been adopted as a
goal by the World Health Organization. It has recently been eradicated from
Asia and from all but four countries in Africa. In 2016, a total of less than 100
cases remained in South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Mali.
The other diseases in this category are acquired by eating insufficiently
cooked fish, crabs, crayfish or aquatic vegetation; they are clearly unrelated to
water supply, but they may be affected by excreta disposal (see Section 1.3).
Classification of infections
Table 1.1 lists these four water-related transmission routes and links them
to their appropriate preventive strategies. In order to create a classification
of diseases (Table 1.2), rather than transmission routes, a slight adjustment is
required because all the faecal–oral infections can be transmitted by both water-
borne and water-washed routes. They are placed in a special category of their
Table 1.2 Environmental classification of water-related infections
Category Infection Pathogenic agent
1 Faecal–oral (water-borne Diarrhoeas and dysenteries
or water-washed) • Amoebic dysentery P
• Balantidiasis P
• Campylobacter enteritis B
• Cholera B
• Cryptosporidiosis P
• E. coli diarrhoea B
• Giardiasis P
• Rotavirus diarrhoea V
• Salmonella B
• Shigellosis (bacillary dysentery) B
• Yersiniosis B
Enteric fevers
• Typhoid B
• Paratyphoid B
Poliomyelitis V
Hepatitis A V
Leptospirosis S
2. Water-washed
(a) skin and eye infections Infectious skin diseases M
(b) other Infectious eye diseases M
Louse-borne typhus R
Louse-borne relapsing fever S
3. Water-based
(a) penetrating skin Schistosomiasis H
(b) ingested Guinea worm disease H
Clonorchiasis H
Diphyllobothriasis H
Fasciolopsiasis H
Paragonimiasis H
Others H
4. Water-related insect
vector
(a) biting near water Sleeping sickness (W Africa) P
(b) breeding in water Filariasis H
Malaria P
River blindness H
Mosquito-borne viruses
• Yellow fever V
• Dengue V
• Others V
B = Bacterium; H = Helminth; P = Protozoon; R = Rickettsia; S = Spirochaete;V = Virus;
M = Miscellaneous.
See Appendix C for further details
Engineering and infectious disease 11
own. The second category is reserved for infections that are exclusively water-
washed; the skin and eye infections plus diseases which are associated with lice.
Each water-related infection can then be assigned to one of the following four
categories: (1) faecal–oral: (2) water-washed; (3) water-based; and (4) insect-
vectored. Table 1.2 lists the major water-related infections and assigns them
to their category in addition to linking them to the type of organism which
causes them.
Estimating the relative importance to public health of the four groups of
water-related diseases is tricky; it is difficult to compare one disease which
kills people in childhood, for example, with another which handicaps people
in middle age. By most yardsticks though, the faecal–oral group accounts
for the majority of the burden of disease which can be prevented by water
supply improvements, and roughly 90% of the deaths (Cairncross and
Valdmanis 2006).
One morning Mr. Cary and uncle Benjamin started for a long day’s
ride.
When her papa kissed Julia good-by, tears came in her eyes.
“My heartache will come back again,” she said.
But work is a good thing for a sad heart, and aunt Abby had plenty
of that for Julia. There were a hundred babies in feathers, out of
doors, which Julia liked to feed. For breakfast, dinner, and supper,
and for lunches between, Julia carried them food in a tin pail.
There were turkeys, chickens, and ducks.
When they saw aunty and Julia and the tin pail coming, they knew
they should be fed. So out of the coops came chickens and turkeys,
peeping and chirping like little birds. And up from the little pond
waddled the tiny ducks. It was fun to see how fast they came; how
they tumbled down and hopped over one another in a hungry
scrabble.
Aunt Abby thought Julia would not miss her dear father so much if
she were with Anne and Rose. So after dinner they went to visit
them.
The little girls had but few playthings, but the kitten made fun
enough for them. Anne had already taught her puss to play with a
string.
Before tea was quite ready for the grown folks, Anne and Rose
took a box of very small dishes out on the grass, and set a table of
their own. Their mamma gave them a part of each dish she had for
her own guest, which made a nice feast.
They laughed and ate a great deal, and drank a great many cups
of tea. But as the most of their tea came out of the milk-pitcher, and
the rest from the teakettle, it did not keep either of them awake that
night.
They had romped so hard, that soon after tea aunt Abby thought
best for Julia to say “Good-night,” and each of the little tea-drinkers
was soon asleep.
Julia told her papa the next day about her good visit, and said she
chased those same kittens all night. Aunt Abby said that was
because she had been so wild, and had got so tired.
CHAPTER VI.
JULIA AND PUSSY GO HOME.
One morning Julia was riding with her uncle, when they passed
Anne and Rose on their way to school. Anne’s kitten had followed
them so slyly, it was not seen till they were near the schoolhouse
door.
Uncle Benjamin bade them teach the puss its a-b-cs.
“Good-by!” said Julia. “I am going home to-morrow.”
Anne and Rose were sorry they could not see this dear little friend
again.
The next morning, when Julia awoke, Ellen had the bags and
baskets ready to take home again. No, not quite ready, for one
basket was to hold the kitten, and Ellen called Julia to get up and
catch it, to be in time for their journey.
Kitty seemed to know they wanted to take her away from her
mother and sister pussy, and she tried to keep out of their way.
But Charley and Johnny were as cunning as she, and caught her
at last.
Ellen said puss had gone in the pantry. Charley peeped in, but did
not see her. He heard a stir of the paper on the shelf, and stood still
at the door. He saw a mouse leap off the shelf, and before he could
hit it with his cap, it had run into a hole in the floor, and got out of the
way of boy and kitten; for kitty jumped from behind the flour-barrel
where she had hid, and Charley caught her.
Johnny held the basket while Charley put her in it. Then Ellen tied
the cover down. Julia had put in that basket some bits of meat for
kitty’s lunch; and in another she had a bottle of milk and Johnny’s old
tin cup, to give puss a drink while on the boat.
But before the carriage was out of the lane, the kitten was out of
the basket, and everybody saw her wildly running back to the woods.
“My kitty! O my kitty! I can never go without her!” cried Julia.
“Here, Johnny!” shouted uncle Benjamin, as he turned his horses
round, “you and Charley scamper after that kitten.”
The boys leaped over the stone wall.
“But this will make us late for the boat,” said Mr. Cary.
“Wont the cars do as well? I can’t bear to let the little girl go
without the kitten that was so ‘pesshus.’”
They drove back to the shade of the willow-tree by the gate. Aunt
Abby had stood there watching them. She said if kitty did not come
back soon, they must wait for her and take to-morrow’s boat. But
then they heard the boys shout, and soon the funny fellows came out
of the woods with the runaway.
Papa Cary tied the cover this time, and puss was surely fast.
Again the loving good-bys were said under the old willow, and
Julia could not tell if she were most glad or sorry to start for home.
Kitty did not get overboard. She drank a cup of city milk—poor
thing!—at bed time, beside the bed Julia and Ellen made for her in
the storeroom, where, cook said, there were plenty of mice.
CHAPTER VII.
AT HOME.
Julia loved the kitten, and the kitten loved Julia. Once more the
halls rang with the little girl’s merry laugh.
Puss learned some smart tricks.
Mr. Cary showed Julia how she might teach the kitten to jump
through her arms.
Clasping her little hands, and holding her arms out like a hoop,
she would kneel on the floor. Puss would step over her hands, held
so low. Then Julia held her arms up a little; and soon the kitten could
hop through this pretty hoop. By-and-by Julia could stand up, and
the kitty would come when she called “Puss! puss!” and jump
through her arms, which was a pretty sight.
Ellen, too, grew fond of puss, and was very kind to her. She would
play with Ellen’s spools of thread, and roll about her ball of mending-
cotton, while the good nurse sat sewing with Julia beside her.
So this simple kitten, one of the humblest of God’s creatures,
helped to make poor motherless Julia a happy child.
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