"Was it here, or somewhere else, that a man (or was it a child?) put his arm (or was it a finger?) in a little hole in the wall and stopped the leak, and so saved the town?" mused Bertha aloud dreamily. "Of course it was," answered Tilly with grave emphasis; and not until the others laughed did Bertha wake up enough to turn her back with a shrug. "Well, it was somewhere, anyhow," she pouted. "As if we could doubt that--after what you said," murmured Tilly. "But they have had floods here, haven't they?" questioned Alma Lane. Genevieve gave a sudden laugh. At the others' surprised look she explained: "Oh, I'm not laughing at the real floods, the _water_ floods they've had, of course. It's just that I happened to think of something I read some time ago. They had one flood here of--molasses." "Mo--lass--es!" chorused several voices. "Yes. A big tank that the city used to have for a reservoir had been bought by a sugar company and turned into a storage for molasses. Well, it burst one day, and a little matter of a million gallons of molasses went exploring through the streets. They say some poor mortals had actually to wade to dry land." "Genevieve! what a story," cried Elsie. "But it's true," declared Genevieve. "A whole half-mile square of the city was flooded, honestly. At least, the newspapers said it was." "How the pickaninnies must have gloried in it," giggled Tilly, "--if they liked 'bread and perlashes' as well as I used to. Only think of having such a _big_ saucerful to dip your bread into!" "Tilly!" groaned Genevieve. They were at Port Chalmette, now. The Crescent City lay behind them, and beyond lay the shining river-roadway, with its fertile, highly-cultivated plantations bordering each side, green and beautiful. "How perfectly, perfectly lovely!" cried Elsie. "And I'm not sick one bit." "Naturally not--yet," laughed Tilly. "But you just wait. We don't sail the Mississippi all the way to New York, you know." "I wish we did," said Genevieve, her eyes dreamily following the shore line. "But we're only on it for a hundred miles." "I don't," disagreed Elsie. "I want to see the Gulf Stream. They say it's a deep indigo blue, and that you can see it plainly. I think a blue river in a green sea must be lovely--like a blue ribbon trailing down a light green gown, you know." "Well, I want to see the real ocean, 'way out--out. I want to see nothing but water, water everywhere," declared Alma Lane. "'And not a drop to drink,'" quoted Tilly. "Well, young lady, you may see the time when you'd give your eyes for a bit of land--and just any old land would do, too, so long as it _stayed put_!" "What does it feel like to be seasick?" asked Cordelia, interestedly. "It feels as if the bottom had dropped out of everything, and you didn't much care, only you wished you'd gone with it," laughed Tilly.