Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/291

Rh "'I'll speak to my wife about it, and rather than lose the chance of engaging you, I've no doubt she would be willing to drown two of them.'

"Our New Zealand friend laughed heartily over the story, and before he left us he had evidently forgotten his annoyance at the circumstance that brought him to the hotel. He added that the story would not be inappropriate to Christchurch, but he feared all his neighbors would not appreciate the joke.

"All along this part of the coast water is obtained by artesian wells at about eighty feet from the surface. Christchurch has hundreds of such wells, and the supply of water never fails; they reminded us of the wells in the sands of Long Island, and along the Atlantic coast of the United States all the way to Florida."