“It’s liquorice-water,” said Shank, with the look of one who expects approval. “I made it myself!”
Nauseous in the extreme, it might have served the purpose of an emetic had not the digestion of the boys been ostrich-like, but, on hearing how it came into existence, Charlie put it a third time to his lips, took a good gulp, and then, nodding his head as he wiped his mouth with his cuff, declared that it was “wonderful.”
“Yes, isn’t it? There’s not many fellows could make stuff like that.”
“No, indeed,” assented the other heartily, as he attacked the bread and cheese. “Does your father know you made it?”
“Oh yes, and he tasted it too—he’d taste anything in the shape of drink—but he spat it out, and then washed his mouth with brandy an’ water. Mother took some too, and she said she had tasted worse drinks; and she only wished that father would take to it. That made father laugh heartily. Then I gave some to little May, and she said it was ‘So nice.’”
“Ay. That was like little May,” remarked Charlie, with a quiet laugh; “she’d say that a mess o’ tar an’ shoe-blacking was nice if you made it. But I say, Shank, let’s see you swim. I’d give anything if I could swim. Do, like a brick as you are. There’s a fine deep hole here under the bank.”
He pointed to a pool in the river where the gurgling eddies certainly indicated considerable depth of water, but his friend shook his head.
“No, Charlie,” he said, “you don’t understand the danger as I do. Don’t you see that the water runs into the hole at such a rate that there’s a tree-mendous eddy that would sweep any man off his legs—”
“But you’re goin’ to swim, you know,” interrupted his friend, “an’ have got to be off your legs anyhow!”
“That’s all you know,” returned the other. “If a man’s swept round by an eddy, don’t you know, he’ll be banged against things, and then the water rushes out of the hole with such a gush, an’ goes thunderin’ down below, over boulders and stones, and—an’—don’t you see?”