The experienced operator immediately placed the fractional currency where it might not tempt the child to change her mind. Then he studied her face with considerable curiosity, and asked:
“Do you live here?”
“Oh, no,” she replied; “we’re only spending the Summer here. We live in New York.”
Mr. Putchett opened his eyes, whistled, and remarked:
“It’s very funny.”
“Why, I don’t think so,” said the child, very innocently. “Lots of people that board here come from New York. Don’t you want to see my well? I dug the deepest well of anybody to-day. Just come and see—it’s only a few steps from here.”
Mechanically, as one struggling with a problem above his comprehension, the financier followed the child, and gazed into a hole, perhaps a foot and a half deep, on the beach.
“That’s my well,” said she, “and that one next it is Frank’s. Nellie’s is way up there. I guess hers would have been the biggest, but a wave came up and spoiled it.”
Mr. Putchett looked from the well into the face of its little digger, and was suddenly conscious of an insane desire to drink some of the water. He took the child’s pail, dipped some water, and was carrying it to his lips, when the child spoiled what was probably the first sentimental feeling of Mr. Putchett’s life by hastily exclaiming:
“You mustn’t drink that—it’s salty!”