"But if you have no water?"
"Well, it is what I call no water," she said, blushing, and lifting her long-lashed eyelids as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. "But my grandfather calls it water enough. I'll show you what I mean."
She moved away a few yards, and Clym followed. When she reached the corner of the enclosure, where the steps were formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement towards the well. It incidentally showed that her apparent languor did not arise from lack of force.
Clym ascended behind her, and noticed a circular burnt patch at the top of the bank. "Ashes?" he said.
"Yes," said Eustacia. "We had a little bonfire here last Fifth of November, and those are the marks of it."
On that spot had stood the fire she had kindled to attract Wildeve.
"That's the only kind of water we have," she continued, tossing a stone into the pool, which lay on the outside of the bank like the white of an eye without its pupil. The stone fell with a flounce, but no Wildeve appeared on the other side, as on a previous occasion there. "My grandfather says he lived for more than twenty years at sea on water twice as bad as that," she went on, "and considers it quite good enough for us here on an emergency."
"Well, as a matter of fact there are no impurities in the water of these pools at this time of the year. It has only just rained into them."
She shook her head. "I am managing to exist in a wilderness, but I cannot drink from a pond," she said.
Clym looked towards the well, which was now deserted, the men having gone home. "It is a long way to send for spring-water," he said, after a silence. "But since you don't like this in the pond, I'll try to get you some myself." He went back to the well. "Yes, I think I could do it by tying on this pail."