s. While they were at work, it made them merry to hear the
mill-sails whirring through the air, and to see, at intervals, the trees
above the quarry bowing their heads, and the reeds waving in the swamp,
and the water of the meadow-ponds dimpling and rippling, as the wind
swept over the Levels. Oliver soon heard something that he liked better
still--the creak of the truck that brought the gypsum from the quarry,
and the crack of the driver's whip.

He threw down the dibble with which he was planting out his cabbages--
tripped over the line he had set to direct his drilling, tumbled on his
face, scrambled up again, and ran, rubbing the dirt from his knees as he
went, to look out some alabaster from the load.

Mildred was not long after him, though he called to her that she had
better stay and finish the cabbages, and though little George,
immediately on feeling himself at liberty, threw himself upon the fresh
mould of the cabbage bed, and amused himself with pulling up, and
flinging right and left, the plants that had just been set. How could
Mildred attend to this, when she was sure she was wanted to turn over
the gypsum, and see what she could find? So Master George went on with
his pranks, till Ailwin, by accident, saw him from the yard, ran and
snatched him up, flung him over her shoulder, and carried him away
screaming, till, to pacify him, she set him down among the poultry,
which he presently found more amusing than young cabbage plants.

"Now we shall have a set of new cups for the spring, presently," said
Oliver, as he measured lump after lump with his little foot-rule.

"Cups for the waters!" exclaimed his father. "So that is the reason of
this prodigious hurry, is it, my boy? You think tin cups not good
enough for your mother, or for her customers, or for the waters. Which
of them do you think ought to be ashamed of tin cups?"

"The water, most of all. Instead of sparkling in a clear bright glass,
it looks as nasty as it tastes in a thing that is more brown and rusty
every time it is dipped. I will give the folk a pair of cups that shall
tempt them to drink--a pair of cups as white as milk."

"They will not long remain white: and those who broke the glasses will
be the more bent upon spoiling your cups, the more pains you spend upon
them."

"I hope the Redfurns will not happen to hear of them. We need not blab;
and the folk who drink the waters go their way, as soon as they have
done."

"Whe