So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now—­some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted—­begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved.  If you will only think, you will see one reason why.  If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour’s too.  She will be like the magician’s servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did:  but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house would have been washed away.

But if it saves money, why do not the water companies do it?

Because—­and really here there are many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he feels is too heavy for him—­because, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers with lawful authority—­water-policemen we will call them—­who can enter people’s houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who have set it wrong.  And that is a power which, in a free country, must never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the officers of a corporation or of the government.

And what shall we do with the rest of the water?

Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do this—­In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will not—­and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk—­bathe in cold water during nine months of the year.  And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease.  And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful.  Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains—­though they are great and needful boons—­which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone:  but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people’s ears the sweetest of all earthly songs—­save the song of a mother over her child—­the song of “The Laughing Water.”