“Know? Bless you, I’m a regular old Thames Drop I’ve been in the cisterns, in the tumblers, down the sewers, in the river, up the pipes, in the reservoirs, in the cisterns, in the teapots, down the sewers, in the river, up the pipes, in the reservoirs, in the cisterns, in the saucepans, down the sewers, in the Thames—” “Hold! Stop there now!” said Nephelo. “Well, so you have heard a great deal in your lifetime. You’ve had some adventures, doubtless?” “I believe you,” said the Cockney-Drop. “The worst was when I was pumped once as fresh water into Rotherhithe. That place is below high-water mark; so are Bermondsey and St. George’s, Southwark. Newington, St. Olave’s, Westminster, and Lambeth, are but little better. Well, you know, drains of the old sort always leak, and there’s a great deal more water poured into London than the Londoners have stowage room for, so the water in low districts can’t pass off at high water, and there ’s a precious flood. We sopped the ground at Rotherhithe, but I thought I never should escape again.” “Will the new pipes make any difference to that?” “Yes; so I am led to understand. They are to be laid with a regular fall, to pass the water off, which, being constant, will be never in excess. The fall will be to a point of course below the water level, and at a convenient place the contents of these drains are to be pumped up into the main sewer. Horrible deal of death caused, Sir, by the damp in those low districts. One man in thirty-seven died of cholera in Rotherhithe last year, when in Clerkenwell, at sixty-three feet above high water, there died but one in five hundred and thirty. The proportion held throughout.” “Ah, by the bye, you have heard, of course, complainings of the quality of water. Will the Londoners sink wells for themselves?” “Wells! What a child you are! Just from the clouds, I see. Wells in a large town get horribly polluted. They propose to consolidate and improve two of the best Thames Water Companies, the Grand Junction and Vauxhall, for the supply of London, until their great scheme can be introduced; and to maintain them afterwards as a reserve guard in case their great scheme shouldn’t prove so triumphant as they think it will be.” “What is this great scheme, I should like to know?” “Why, they talk of fetching rain-water from a tract of heath between Bagshot and Farnham. The rain there soaks through a thin crust of growing herbage, which is the only perfect filter, chemical as well as mechanical—the living rootlets extract more than we can, where impurity exists. Then, Sir, the rain runs into a large bed of siliceous sand, placed over marl; below the marl there is siliceous sand again—Ah, I perceive you are not geological.” “Go on.”