But not again did Billie give way to the delirium of the lost. With her back to the sun she hurried on, not even a village of prairie dogs attracting her absorbed attention. As the sun began his afternoon course, she became conscious of an intense, unconquerable thirst. At first she fought against it, but at last she sat down and indulged in memories of spring water. All the cool bubbling wells she had ever seen came back to her mind. Memories of a little trickling brook on Seven League Island beside which she had once knelt and taken deep long draughts; then there was Cold Spring, where she had been on a picnic. What a spring that was! A perfect fountain of delicious clear water. She recalled a swim she had had in a mountain lake where the water was as clear as crystal and very cold. She had swallowed quite a mouthful when she dived off a rock, and she could still feel the coolness on her lips.
“But best of all,” she murmured, “best of all was the water in that sunken barrel spring on Percy’s place. Oh, for a drop of it now,” she cried.
She lay down on the ground and pillowed her head on her arms. Through the tall grasses she could see someone still a great way off coming toward her so rapidly that the figure loomed larger and larger on the landscape. She sat up and waited.
“Here I am,” she heard herself calling. Then she laughed wildly. What she had taken for a dumpy squat lady in a bonnet trimmed with two pointed velvet bows, turned out to be a great stupid jackrabbit with ears as big as a mule’s, who leaped on his hind legs with incredible rapidity.
“Silly old thing,” exclaimed Billie irritably. “I thought you were a nice, kind, fat old person bringing me a glass of water.”
The truth is the rabbit did bear a striking resemblance to the janitress at West Haven High School.
Billie fell asleep and dreamed she was in a fiery furnace calling to her father, when suddenly a delicious wetness touched her lips and a few drops of water trickled down her parched throat. She opened her eyes. Buckthorne Hawkes, Rosina’s brother, was leaning over her with a flask of water in his hand.
Was she still dreaming or did she hear him say:
“Next time you will buy an opal of me, eh?”
She opened her eyes again and looked into the face of the peddler who, ages back, had cursed them and their ancestors.