I tramp ten miles a day in them;
they have been soaked through a hundred times. You buy a boy a pair
of boots--"
"Why don't you cover over the well?" I suggested.
"There you are again," he replied. "The philosopher in me--the
sensible man--says, 'What is the good of the well? It is nothing but
mud and rubbish. Something is always falling into it--if it isn't
the children it's the pigs. Why not do away with it?'"
"Seems to be sound advice," I commented.
"It is," he agreed. "No man alive has more sound commonsense than I
have, if only I were capable of listening to myself. Do you know why
I don't brick in that well? Because my wife told me I would have to.
It was the first thing she said when she saw it. She says it again
every time anything does fall into it. 'If only you would take my
advice'--you know the sort of thing. Nobody irritates me more than
the person who says, 'I told you so.' It's a picturesque old ruin:
it used to be haunted. That's all been knocked on the head since we
came. What self-respecting nymph can haunt a well into which
children and pigs are for ever flopping?"
He laughed; but before I could join him he was angry again. "Why
should I block up an historic well, that is an ornament to the
garden, because a pack of fools can't keep a gate shut? As for the
children, what they want is a thorough good whipping, and one of
these days--"
A voice crying to us to stop interrupted him.
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