for lack of skill with
joinery tools. He now, however, had in Farrow at once a willing pupil
and an artist, and the work went forward in Farrow's house, Miriam
watching its progress with great interest. She could even contribute
her share, and the graduation of the rim was left to her, a task she
performed with accuracy after a few failures in pencil. It was a
handsome instrument when it was completed. The relative distances of
the planets from the sun could not be preserved, nor their relative
magnitudes; but what was of more importance, their relative velocities
in their orbits were maintained. The day came when the machine was to
be first used. Miriam insisted that there should be no experiments
with it beforehand. She desired, even at the risk of disappointment,
to see a dramatic start into existence. She did not wish her pleasure
to be spoiled and her excitement to be diminished by trials. Her
husband humoured her, but secretly he took care that every preventible
chance of a breakdown should be removed. When she was absent, he
tested every pinion and every cog, eased a wheel here and an axle
there, and in truth what he had to do in this way with file and
sandpaper was almost equal to the labour spent upon saw and chisel.
Infinite adjustment was necessary to make the idea a noiseless, smooth
practical success, and infinite precautions had to be taken and devices
invented which were not foreseen when the drawing first appeared on
paper. With some of these difficulties Miriam, of course, was
acquainted. They would not probably have been so great to a
professional instrument-maker, but they were very considerable to an
amateur. Farrow selected the best-seasoned wood he could find, but it
frequently happened that after it was cut it warped a little, and the
slightest want of truth threw all the connected part out of gear.
Miriam learned something when she saw that a wheel whose revolution was
not in a perfect plane could give rise to so much annoyance, and she
learned something also when she saw how her husband, in the true spirit
of a genuine craftsman, remained discontented if there was the
slightest looseness in a bearing.

"Do you think it matters?" said she.

"Matters! Don't you see that if it goes on it gets worse? Every
wobble increases the next, and not only so, it sets the whole thing
wobbling."

"Couldn't you manage to put a piece on? Suppose you lined that hole
with something."

"Oh, no