“If you drinks a drop more, Miss Lucy, you’ll just go like my pore young sister goed,” observed Cook in a warning voice, as Lucille paused to get her second wind for the second draught. (Lucille had just been tortured at the stake by Sioux and Blackfeet—thirsty work on a July afternoon.) “And how did she go, Cookie-Bird—_Pop?_” inquired Lucille politely, with round eyes, considering over the top of the big lemonade-flagon as it rose again to her determined little mouth. “No, Miss Lucy,” replied Cook severely. “Pop she did not. She swole … swole and swole.” “You mean ‘swelled,’ Cookoo,” corrected Lucille, inclined to be a little didactic and corrective at the age of ten. “Well, she were _my_ sister after all, Miss Lucy,” retorted Cook, “and perhaps I may, or may not, know what she done. _I_ say she swole—and what is more she swole clean into a dropsy. All along of drinking water…. _Drops_ of water—_Dropsy_.” “Never drink water,” murmured Dam, absentmindedly annexing, and pocketing, an apple. “Ah, water, but you see this is lemonade,” countered Lucille. “Home-made, too, and not—er—gusty. It doesn’t make you go——” and here it is regrettable to have to relate that Lucille made a shockingly realistic sound, painfully indicative of the condition of one who has imbibed unwisely and too well of a gas-impregnated liquor. “No more does water in my experiants,” returned Cook, “and I was not allooding to wulgarity, Miss Lucy, which you should know better than to do such. My pore young sister’s systerm turned watery and they tapped her at the last. All through drinking too much water, which lemonade ain’t so very different either, be it never so ’ome-made…. Tapped ’er they did—like a carksk, an’ ’er a Band of ’Oper, Blue Ribander, an’ Sunday Schooler from birth, an’ not departin’ from it when she grew up. Such be the Ways of Providence,” and Cook sighed with protestive respectfulness…. “Tapped ’er systerm, they did,” she added pensively, and with a little justifiable pride. “Were they hard taps?” inquired Lucille, reappearing from behind the flagon. “I hate them myself, even on the funny-bone or knuckles—but on the _cistern!_ Ugh!” “_Hard_ taps; they was _silver_ taps,” ejaculated Cook, “and drawed gallings and gallings—and nothing to laugh at, Master Dammicles, neether…. So don’t you drink no more, Miss Lucy.” “I can’t,” admitted Lucille—and indeed, to Dam, who regarded his “cousin” with considerable concern, it did seem that, even as Cook’s poor young sister of unhappy memory, Lucille had “swole”—though only locally. “Does _beer_ make you swell or swole or swellow when you swallow, Cooker?” he inquired; “because, if so, _you_ had better be—” but he was not allowed to conclude his deduction, for cook, bridling, bristling, and incensed, bore down upon the children and swept them from her kitchen.