“You can get it at Johnson’s, the baker’s,” Clif said, “or over at Green’s, the cottage with the painted roof, down the road. If you give me threepence I’ll go and buy you a bucketful.”
“Threepence!” cried Mrs. Conway; “you don’t mean to tell me water costs anything?”
Clif soothed her shyly.
“Not often,” he said; “in the winter you never have to buy it, and sometimes in the summer there is enough, but whenever there is a drought like this, everybody buys their drinking water from the people who have big wells and tanks, and get what they want for washing or baths from the pools at the head of the Swamp.”
[156]
]The poor little lady looked quite stunned under this fresh blow. Surely this was a very dreadful wilderness she had lighted upon.
“I—I think we had better have tea at once,” she said faintly. Phyl had unpacked some cups and saucers, Dolly had found the butter, Weenie was eating ravenously at the packet of sugar.
Phyl darted an ungrateful glance at their small benefactors; she considered they need not have worried her mother about things like this the first evening, and she thought it quite time they retired, since there seemed nothing more they could do now but stand and stare.
While her mother stooped down to make the tea she slipped up to them.
“Is it easier for you to go by the front door or the back?” she said, not loud enough however to be heard by her mother.
“The back,” said Clif