"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 straggling 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!"
The sentimentalist sorrowfully put the bitter draught away, and the child rattled on:
"If you're down here to-morrow, I'll show you where we find scallop-shells; maybe you can find some with pink and yellow spots on them. I've got some. If you don't find any, I'll give you one."
"Thank you," said her companion.
Just then some one shouted "Alice!" and the child exclaiming, "Mamma's calling me; good-by," hurried away, while the broker walked slowly toward the hotel with an expression of countenance which would have hidden him from his oldest acquaintance.
Mr. Putchett spent the evening on the piazza instead of in the barroom, and he neither smoked nor drank. Before retiring he contracted with the colored cook to shave him in the morning, and to black his boots; and he visited the single store of the neighborhood and purchased a shirt, some collars, and a cravat.