now leaning over the glass. "Wonderful indeed. And
now, I suppose, you polish this metal face, and make it like a
looking-glass?"

"Yes, with leather and rouge," said Uncle Richard, as he too put on his
glasses and examined the surface carefully. "But there is something
wrong about it."

"Wrong? Oh no, uncle; that stuff has all turned to silver plainly
enough," cried Tom.

"True, boy, but my instructions tell me that the result ought to be a
bright metallic surface of a golden rosy hue, and that a very little
polishing should make it brilliant."

"Perhaps this will be," said the Vicar, "when it is polished."

"I'm afraid not," said Uncle Richard. "There is a hitch somewhere.
Either I have made some error in the quantities of my chemicals, or I
have left the glass in the solution too long, with the result that the
silver has become coated with the dirty-looking precipitation left when
the metallic silver is thrown down. However, we are very near success,
and we'll polish and see what result we get. Now, Tom, up into the
laboratory, and bring down from the second shelf that small bottle of
rouge, the packet of cotton-wool, and the roll of fine chamois leather.
One moment--the scissors too, and the ball of twine."

Tom ran up-stairs, found the articles required, and was about to
descend, when, glancing from the window, he caught sight of Pete
Warboys, who had raised himself by getting his toes in some inequality
of the wall, and was now resting his folded arms upon the top and his
chin upon them, staring hard at the mill.

"Oh, how I should like to be behind him with a stick!" thought Tom; and
he laughed to himself as he turned away and went down, to find that his
uncle had just uncovered the great speculum they had ground and
polished, where it stood upon a stout shelf at the far side of the
workshop, and was pointing out its perfections to the Vicar.

"Yes, Brandon," said the latter, "I suppose it is very beautiful in its
shaping, but to me it is only a disc of glass. So you are going to
silver that?"

"When I am sure of what I am doing," replied Uncle Richard. "I must
experimentalise once or twice more first. Here, Tom, set those things
down and come here. I don't like this glass to lie upon the shelf.
We'll lay a board down here, and turn the speculum face downwards upon
the floor."

Tom hurried to his uncle's side, and after the board had been laid upon
the floor, and covered with a soft cloth