“There’s a well beyond,” said Jimmy, “at the end of the field across the hill, but I don’t would the likes of yez drink the water that does be in it.”
“Saltish?” said Priscilla.
“It is not then. But the cattle does be drinking out of it and I wouldn’t say it was too clean.”
“If we boil it,” said Frank, “that won’t matter.”
He had read, as most of us did at the time, accounts of the precautions taken by the Japanese doctors during the war with Russia to save the soldiers under their care from enteric fever. He believed that boiling removed dirt from water.
“There’s worms in it,” said Jimmy. “It’s hardly ever you take a cupful out of it without you’d feel the worms on your tongue and you drinking it.”
Miss Rutherford looked at Priscilla, who appeared undismayed at the prospect of swallowing worms. Then she looked at Frank. He was evidently doubtful. His faith in boiling did not save him from a certain shrinking from wormy soup.
“Once we were out for a picnic,” said Priscilla, “and when we’d finished tea we found a frog, dead, of course, in the bottom of the kettle. It hadn’t flavoured the tea in the least. In fact we didn’t know it was there till afterwards.”
She poured out the cold soup into the two cups and the enamelled mug as she spoke. Then she handed the pot to Jimmy.
“Run now,” she said, “and fill that up with your dirty water. We’ll have the stove lit and the other packet of soup ready by the time you’re back.”