in the putrid ditches, where they must come
in contact with abominations highly
injurious." *

* Report of Mr. Bowie on the cause of Cholera in
Bermondsey.

So Nebulus was carried in a pail out of
the ditch to a poor woman's home, and put
into a battered saucepan with some other
water. Thence, after boiling, he was poured
into an earthen tea-pot over some stuff of
wretched flavour, said to be tea. Now,
thought the fairy, after all, I may give pleasure
at the breakfast of these wretched people.
He pictured to himself a scene of love as
preface to a day of squalid toil, but he
experienced a second disappointment. The
woman took him to another room of which
the atmosphere was noisome; there he saw
that he was destined for the comfort of a man
and his two children, prostrate upon the floor
beneath a heap of rags. These three were
sick; the woman swore at them, and Nebulus
shrunk down into the bottom of the tea-pot.
Even the thirst of fever could not tolerate
too much of its contents, so Nebulus, after a
little time, was carried out and thrown into a
heap of filth upon the gutter.

Nubis, in the meantime, had commenced
his day with hope of a more fortunate career.
On falling first into the Thames he had been
much annoyed by various pollutions, and
been surprised to find, on kissing a few
neighbour drops, that their lips tasted inky.
This was caused, they said, by chalk pervading
the whole river in the proportion of sixteen
grains to the gallon. That was what made
their water inky to the taste of those who
were accustomed to much purer draughts.
"It makes," they explained, "our river-water
hard, according to man's phrase; so hard as to
entail on multitudes who use it, some disease,
with much expense and trouble."

"But all the mud and filth," said Nubis,
"surely no man drinks that?"

"No," laughed the River-Drops, "not all of
it.  Much of the water used in London passes
through filters, and a filter suffers no mud or
any impurity to pass, except what is dissolved.
The chalk is dissolved, and there is filth and
putrid gas dissolved."

"That is a bad business," said Nubis, who
already felt his own drops exercising that
absorbent power for which water is so famous,
and incorporating in their substance matters
that the Rain-Cloud never knew.

Presently Nubis found himself entangled
in a current, by which he was sucked through
a long pipe into a meeting of Water-Drops, all
summoned from the Thames. He himself
passed through a filter, was received into a
reservoir, and, having asked the way of
friendly neighbours, worked for himself with
small delay a passage through the mainpipe
into London.

Bewildered by his long, dark journey underground,
Nubis at length saw light, and presently
dashed forth out of a tap into a pitcher. He saw
that there was fixed under the tap a water-butt,
but into this he did not fall. A crowd of
women holding pitchers, saucepans, pails,
were chattering and screaming over him, and
the anxiety of all appeared to be to catch the
water as it ran out of the tap, before it came
into the tub or cistern. Nubis rejoiced that
his good fortune brought him to a district
in which it might become his privilege to
bless the poor, and his eye sparkled as his
mistress, with many rests upon the way,
carried her pitcher and a heavy pail upstairs.
She placed both vessels, full of water,
underneath her bed, and then went out again for
more, carrying a basin and a fish-kettle.
Nubis pitied the poor creature, heartily
wishing that he could have poured out of a
tap into the room itself to save the time and
labour of his mistress.

The pitcher wherein the good fairy lurked,
remained under the bed through the remainder
of that day, and during the next night, the
room being, for the whole time, closely
tenanted. Long before morning, Nubis felt that
his own drops and all the water near him had
lost their delightful coolness, and had been
busily absorbing smells and vapours from the
close apartment. In the morning, when the
husband dipped a teacup in the pitcher,
Nubis readily ran into it, glad to escape from
his unwholesome prison. The man putting
the water to his lips, found it so warm and
repulsive, that, in a pet, he flung it from the
window, and it fell into the water-butt
beneath.

The water-butt was of the common sort,
described thus by a member of the human
race:—"Generally speaking, the wood
becomes decomposed and covered with fungi;
and indeed, I can best describe their condition
by terming them filthy." This water-butt
was placed under the same shed with a
neglected cesspool, from which the water—ever
absorbing—had absorbed pollution. It
contained a kitten among other trifles. "How
many people have to drink out of this butt?"
asked Nubis. "Really I cannot tell you," said
a neighbour Drop. "Once I was in a butt in
Bethnal Green, twenty-one inches across, and a
foot deep, which was to supply forty-eight
families.* People store for themselves, and
when they know how dirty these tubs are, they
should not use them." "But the labour of
dragging water home, the impossibility of
taking home abundance, the pollution of keeping
it in dwelling-rooms and under beds." "Oh,
yes," said the other Drop; "all very true.
Besides, our water is not of a sort to keep. In
this tub there is quite a microscopic vegetable
garden, so I heard a doctor say who yesterday
came hither with a party to inspect the
district. One of them said he had a still used
only for distilling water, and that one day, by
chance, the bottoms of a series of distillations
boiled to dryness Thereupon, the dry mass

* Report of Dr. Gavin.