go accordin'....'" Mrs. Tapping, whose system was
always to turn the conversation to some incident in which she had been
prominent, might have developed this one further, but Mrs. Riley
interrupted her with Celtic _naivete_.

"D'ye mane to say, me dyurr, that ye can't hearr 'em now? Kape your
tongue silent and listen!" A good, full brogue permits speech that would
offend in colourless Saxon; and Mrs. Tapping made no protest, but
listened. Sure enough the rousing, maddening "Fire, fire, fire, fire,
fire!" was on its way at speed somewhere close at hand. It grew and
lessened and died. And Mrs. Riley was triumphant. "That's a larrudge
fire, shure!" said she, transposing her impression of the enthusiasm of
the engine to the area of the conflagration. Cold logic perceives that
an engine may be just as keen to pump on a cottage as on a palace,
before it knows which. Mrs. Riley had come from Tipperary, and had
brought a sympathetic imagination with her, leaving any logic she
possessed behind.

A few minutes before the lamplighter passed--saying to the old
watchman:--"Goin' to bed, Sam?" and on receiving the reply, "Time enough
yet!" rejoining sarcastically:--"Time enough for a quart!"--the
labourers at the dyke had recognised the fact that unless new material
could be obtained, the pent-up waters would burst the curb and bound,
rejoicing to be free, and rush headlong to the nearest drain. All the
work would be lost unless a fresh supply could be obtained; the ruling
fiction of a new Noachian deluge might prove a deadly reality instead
of, as now, a theoretical contingency under conditions which engineering
skill might avert. The Sappers and Miners who were roused from their
beds to make good a dynamited embankment and block the relentless Thames
did not work with a more untiring zeal to baffle a real enemy than did
Dave and Dolly to keep out a fictitious one, and hypothetically save
Uncle Moses and Aunt M'riar from drowning. But all efforts would be
useless if there was to be a shortage of mud.

The faces of our little friends, and their little friends, were
earnestness itself as they concentrated on the great work in the glow of
the sunset. They had no eyes for its glories. The lamplighter even,
dropping jewels as he went, passed them by unheeded. The organ
interpreted Donizetti in vain. Despair seemed imminent when Dolly, who,
though small, was as keen as the keenest of the diggers, came back after
a special effort with