"We might draw it up, bucket by bucket, and throw it away. Then I suppose it would fill with clean water, wouldn't it?" "If we did, 'twould break all our backs an' there's more to do than empty old wells. Master Hal, what's _your_ say?" "Hmm, we might rig up some sort of machinery and stir it all up, and with chemicals we could clear it and--" "Troth we could, if we'd a month o' Sundays to do it in an' slathers o' time an' money spoilin' to be spent." Hallam was disgusted. Already he had blamed himself for his haughty refusal of Mr. Wingate's offer, on the previous day, to send a practical man to look over the premises and "set them going," as any landlord would. But the lad had replied, as one in authority to decide for his absent parents: "We won't trouble you, sir. What happens to us, after we leave Fairacres, is our own affair. If you get your rent, that should be sufficient for you." After that the offer was not renewed; for Mr. Wingate was not the man to waste either money or service, and the lad's tone angered him. Regrets were now, as always, useless, and Cleena's open disdain of Hallam's suggestion sent him limping angrily away; though Amy laughed over her own "valuable contribution to the solution of the dilemma," and by her intentional use of the longest words at hand caused Fayette to regard her with a wonderment that was ludicrous in itself. "Well, Goodsoul, we've helped a lot. Ask our 'Rep-Dem-Prob' what his 'boys' would do." "What for no? Sure, he's more sense nor the whole of us. Say, me gineral, what's the way out?" Fayette colored with pride. He had an inordinate vanity, and, like most of his sort, he possessed an almost startling keenness of intelligence in some respects, as contrasted with his foolishness in others. Moreover, he had been disciplined by poverty, and had always lived among working people and, for a long time, about the carpet mills. "Well, the 'Supe's' force-pump." "Hmm, I know, I know. But what's the 'Supe' an' his pump? Is he fish, flesh, or fowl, eh?" "He's the 'Supe' to the mill. Ain't ye any sense?" "No. None left after botherin' with you. What's it, Miss Amy?" "I know. You mean Mr. Metcalf, don't you?" "Yes." "What would he do? How could he help us?" "Lend me the donkey. I'll ride and tell him. All them houses--see them mill cottages, down yonder?" "Certainly. They look very pretty from here, with all the trees about them." "They've got wells. Once in six months the wells has to be cleared out. That's orders. Me an' another fellow goes down 'em, after the pump's drawed out all it can. We bail 'em out. I clean cisterns, too. Ain't another fellow in the village as good at a cistern as me. See, I'm slim. I can get down a man-hole 't nobody else can. Shall I go?" "I'll ask Hallam." Who, upon consultation, replied:-- "I suppose it's the only thing we can do, but it does go against my inclination to ask favors of anybody."