he hasn't been talking to you about it, has he?" replied
Will.

"Yes; said your father must be getting off his head to go and buy up
such a miserable ramshackle piece of rubbish. It was only fit to knock
to pieces and sell for old copper."

"Old Drinkwater had better keep his tongue quiet," said Will, shortly,
"or he'll make my father so much off his head that he will give him what
he calls the sack."

"Nonsense! Your father would not turn away such an old servant as
that."

"He wouldn't like to, of course," said Will, loftily; "but Boil O has
grown so precious bumptious, and he doesn't care to do this, and he
doesn't care to do that. I believe he thinks he's master of the whole
place."

"Well, he always was so ever since I can remember; but--tchah!--your
father would not turn him away. My father says he is the most useful
man he ever knew. Why, he's just like what we say when we count the
rye-grass: soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor--you know."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Will, "and he isn't soldier nor thief; but he
can do pretty well everything, from making a box, plastering and
painting, to mending a lock or shoeing a horse. But such impudence! My
father mad, indeed! I think it was a very wise thing for him to do, to
buy that engine so cheaply. The old mill's nearly all wood. Suppose it
were to catch fire?"

"Bother!" said Josh. "Why hasn't it caught fire all these two hundred
years since it was built?"

"Because everybody's been so careful," said Will. "But it might catch
fire any day."

"Pigs might fly," said Josh. "Well, suppose it did. Haven't you got
plenty of water to put it out?"

"Yes, but how are you going to throw it up to the top? Why, with that
engine hose and branch, now old Boil O's put the pump suckers right, you
could throw the water all over the place a hundred feet, I daresay, in a
regular shower. Ha, ha, ha! I say, Josh, what a game!"

"What's a game?"

"Shouldn't I like to have the old thing out, backed up to the dam, with
some of the men ready to pump--a shower, you know."

"Well, I suppose you mean something, but I don't understand."

"A shower--umbrella."

"Well, everybody puts up an umbrella in a shower."

"Yah! What an old thick-head you are!--old Manners sitting under his
umbrella, and we made it rain."

Josh's face expanded very gradually into the broadest of grins,
wrinkling up so much that it was at the expense of his eyes, which
gradually closed unti