"Now, uncle, what's the next thing to be done?" said Tom at breakfast
that morning.
"I think we may begin the body of the telescope now, Tom," said his
uncle.
"The body?"
"Yes; the speculum is what we might call the life of the whole
instrument, and the rest will be simplicity itself. We've got to bring
a little mechanical work to bear, and the thing is done."
"But it will want a lot of glasses fixed about in a big tube, won't it?"
"No; nothing but the flat and eye-pieces, and I have the lenses to make
these. By the way, I have some letters to write, and shall be busy all
the morning. Your uncle seems to be still unwell, and I must write to
him, for one thing. I tell you what I want done. We have no place
there for keeping papers or drawings in, and where one can sit down and
write at times, and lock up afterwards. I've been thinking that I'll
have the big old bureau desk with its drawers taken out of the study,
and carried up into the laboratory. It can stand beneath the shelves on
the right of the east window; and you might take up a chair or two, and
a piece of old carpet as well. Get David to help you."
"All right, uncle."
So when breakfast was over, Tom went out and found David, who was
sticking stakes along the outside of the asparagus bed, and tying tarred
twine from one to the other, so as to keep the plume-like stems from
blowing about and breaking.
"Mornin', Master Tom," he said. "I say, my Maria Louisas are swelling
out fast. We shall soon have to be on the look-out for pear-ketchers."
"All right, David, I'll help you. I hope it is Pete Warboys. I should
like to give him stick."
"We'll give him stake instead, Master Tom."
"Never mind that now. I want you to help me move that chest of drawers
and desk out of uncle's study to the laboratory."
"Very good, sir; but you might call a spade a spade."
"What do you mean?" said Tom, staring.
"Labor hatory, sir! why don't you say windmill?"
"Because it has been made into an observatory, laboratory, and workshop
all in one," said Tom, rather stiffly.
"Just as you like, Master Tom; but you may take the sails off, and the
fan, and put all the rattle-traps in it you like, but it can't make it
anything but what it was born to be, and that was a windmill."
"Well, we won't argue," said Tom. "Come along."
He led the way to the study, where Uncle Richard was seated at a table
writing, and it being a particularly dry day, David spent about five
minutes wiping nothing off his shoes on every mat he passed, to Tom's
great amusement. Then after making a bow and a scrape to his master
which were not seen, he gave his nose a rub with his cuff, and went back
to put his hat outside the door.
"Come along, David," said Tom. "This is it."
The gardener went on tiptoe to the end of the old escritoire, stooped,
lifted it, and shook his head.
"You can't manage one end o' that, Master Tom," he said in a hoarse
whisper.
"No, too weighty," said his master; and without looking round he passed
his keys. "Take out the drawers, they're heavy, and carry them
separately."
This plan was followed out, each taking a drawer and carrying it out
through the garden, and across the lane to the yard gate, which Tom
unlocked after resting his drawer on the wall; leaving it there while he
ran up and unlocked the tower door, then going back for the load he had
left.
These two drawers were carried into the stone-floored workshop, where
the bench under the window was covered with an old blanket, another
doing duty as cover for the glass tool which had been replaced on the
head of the cask.
"My word! what a differ there is here," said David, as he glanced round
with the drawer in his hands. "What yer put to bed under they blankets,
sir?"
"Specula, David."
"Speckle-hay? What, are you forcing on 'em?"
"Forcing?" said Tom, laughing.
"Yes; are they coming up?"
"Nonsense! Here are those two great pieces of glass uncle brought down.
We've been polishing one."
"Oh! them," cried David. "My word! Wonder what old miller would ha'
said to see his place ramfoozled about like this?"
"Come along," cried Tom; and the drawers were carried up, each being
crammed full of papers and books, and laid on the floor close to the old
mill-post.
"Worser and worser," said David, looking round. "Dear, dear! the times
I've been up here when the sacks was standing all about, some flour and
some wheat, and the stones spinning round, the hopper going tippenny
tap--tippenny tap, and the meal-dust so thick you could hardly breathe.
I 'member coming out one night, and going home, and my missus says to
me, `Why, Davy, old man, what yer been a-doing on? Yer head's all
powdered up like Squire Winkum's footman.' It was only meal, yer know."
"And now you can come and go without getting white, David," said Tom,
moving a stool from under the newly put up shelves. "This is where the
bureau is to go."
"Is it now?" said David, scratching his head. "Why that's where the old
bin used to be. Ay, I've set on that bin many's the time on a windy
night, when miller wanted to get a lot o' grist done."
"Back again," said Tom; and two more drawers were carried over. Then
the framework and desk were fetched, with Mrs Fidler standing ready,
dustpan and brush in hand, to remove any dirt and fluff that might be
underneath.
"Tidy heavy now, Master Tom," said David, as they bore the old
walnut-wood piece of furniture across the garden and up to the mill,
only setting it down once just inside the yard by way of a rest, and to
close the gate.
Then the piece of furniture was carried in, and after some little
scheming, hoisted up the steep ladder flight of steps, David getting
under it and forcing it up with his head.
"Wonderful heavy bit o' wood, Master Tom," said the gardener.
"It's an awkward place to get it up, David," replied the boy. "Now
then, just under those shelves. It will stand capitally there, and get
plenty of light for writing."
But the bureau did not stand capitally there, for the back feet were
higher than the front, consequent upon the floor having sunk from the
weight of millstones in the middle.
"She'll want a couple o' wedges under her, Master Tom," said David.
"Yes. I've got a couple of pieces that will just do--part of a little
box," cried Tom. "I'll fetch them, and the saw to cut the exact size.
You wait here."
"And put the drawers in, sir?"
"Not till we've got this right," replied Tom, who was already at the
head of the steps; and he ran down and across to the house, obtained the
saw from the tool-chest, and hurried back to the mill, where he found
David down in the workshop, waiting for him with his hands in his
pockets.
"Didn't yer uncle ought to leave his tool-chest over here, sir?" said
the gardener.
"Oh yes, I suppose he will," said Tom. "It would be handier. Halloo,
did you open that window?"
"No, sir. I see it ajar like when we first came, and it just blowed
open like when the door was swung back."
Tom said no more, but led the way up-stairs, where the pieces of wood
were wedged in under the front legs, sawn off square, and the drawers
were replaced.
"Capital, Master Tom," cried the gardener. "You'd make quite a
carpenter. I say, what's it like up-stairs?"
"Come and see," said Tom, ready to idle a little now the work was done,
and very proud of the place he had helped to contrive.
David tightened his blue serge apron roll about his waist, and followed
up into the observatory, smiling, but ready to depreciate everything.
"Ay, but it's a big change," he said; "no sacks o' wheat, no reg'lar
machinery. There's the master's tallow scoop; he give me a look through
it once, and there was the moon all covered with spots o' grease like
you see on soup sometimes. Well, it's his'n, and he's a right to do
what he likes with the place. Ah, many's the time I've been up here
too. Why, Jose the carpenter chap's cut away the top of the post here.
You used to be able to move a bit of an iron contrapshum, and that would
send the fan spinning, and the whole top would work round till the sails
faced the wind."
"Well, the whole top will work round now, David."
"Not it, sir, without the sails."
"But I tell you it will," said Tom, moving a bar, and throwing open the
long shutter, which fell back easily, letting in a long strip of
sunshine, and giving a view of the blue sky from low-down toward the
horizon to the zenith.
"Well, you do get plenty of ventilation," said David oracularly.
"Nothing like plenty of air for plants, and it's good for humans too.
Make you grow strong and stocky, Master Tom. But the top used to turn
all round in the old days."
"So it does now, so that uncle can direct his telescope any way. Look
here!"
The boy moved to the side, and took hold of an endless rope, run round a
wheel fixed to the side, pulled at the rope, and the wheel began to
revolve, turning with it a small cogged barrel, which acted in turn upon
the row of cogs belonging to the bottom of the woodwork dome, which
began to move steadily round.
"Well, that caps me," said David. "I thought it was a fixter now."
"And you thought wrong, Davy," said Tom, going up two or three steps,
and passing out through the open shutter, and lowering himself into the
little gallery that had once communicated with the fan, and here he
stood looking out.
"All right there, Master Tom?"
"Yes."
"May I move the thing?"
"If you like."
David, as eagerly as a child with a new toy, began to pull at the rope,
when the top began to revolve, taking the little gallery with it, and
giving Tom a ride pretty well round the place before the gardener
stopped, and turned his face through the opening left by the shutter.
"Goes splendid!" he said, as Tom came in and closed the shutter. "I
wouldn't ha' believed it. And so the master's going to build a big
tallow scoop up there, is he?"
"Yes; and we've got a good deal of it done. There, let's get down.
Uncle may want me."
"Ay, and I must get back to my garden, sir. There's a deal to do there,
and I could manage with a lot of help."
"Uncle was talking of making this place quite a study, and putting a lot
of books here, the other day," said Tom, as they descended to the
laboratory.
"Was he now? Rare windy place, though, sir, isn't it? Windy milly
place, eh?"
"Well, you said air was good," said Tom, laughing; and they went down
into the workshop. "Mustn't have that window left open though," said
Tom; and, going to the side, he reached over the bench with the blanket
spread over it, drew in the iron-framed lattice window, and fastened it,
and was drawing back, when the blanket, which had been hanging draped
over a good deal at one end, yielded to that end's weight, and glided
off, to fall in a heap upon the stones.
Tom stooped quickly to pick it up, but as his head was descending below
the level of the great bench-table, he stopped short, staring at its
bare level surface, rose up, turned, and looked sharply at the gardener,
and then in quite an excited way stepped to where the upturned cask
stood covered with its blanket, and raised it as if expecting to find
something there.
But the glass disc his uncle spoke of as a tool lay there only; and with
a horrible feeling of dread beginning to oppress him, Tom turned back to
the heap of blanket lying upon the floor, stooped over it, but feared to
remove it--to lift it up from the worn flagstones.
"Anything the matter, sir?" said David, looking at him curiously from
the door.
"Matter? Yes!" cried Tom, who was beginning to feel a peculiar tremor.
"David, you--you opened that window."
"Nay, sir, I never touched it," said the gardener stoutly.
"Yes; while I was gone for the saw and wedges."
"Nay, sir, I come down and just looked about, that's all; I never
touched the window."
"But--but there was the beautiful, carefully-ground speculum there on
that bench, just as uncle and I had finished it. We left it covered
over last night--with the blanket--and--and--" he added in a tone of
despair, "it isn't there now."
"Well, I never touched it, sir," said the gardener; "you may search my
pockets if you like."
Tom could not see the absurdity of the man's suggestion, and in his
agony of mind, feeling as he did what must have happened if any one had
dragged at the blanket, he stooped down once more to gather it up, but
paused with his hand an inch or two away from the highest fold, not
daring to touch it.
"It's broken," he moaned to himself; "I know it is!" and the cold
perspiration stood out upon his forehead.
"I shouldn't ha' persoomed to touch none o' master's contrapshums, sir,"
broke in the gardener, rather sharply, "so don't you go and tell him as
I did. I know how partickler he always is."
"Broken--broken!" murmured Tom. "The poor speculum--and after all that
work."
Then slowly taking the fold of the blanket in his hand he raised it up,
and drew it on one side, faintly hoping that he might be wrong, but
hoping against hope, for the next moment he had unveiled it where it
lay, to see his worst fears confirmed--the beautiful limpid-looking
object lay upon the flag at the end, broken in three pieces, one of
which reflected the boy's agitated face.