ssion.

"Oh, that's easy! It's just a question of time."

"How much time?"

"Heaven knows."

"Was it the valve?"

"It was--several things."

His tone had the vagueness born of concentration. I could see that this
was no time to press for information. Besides, in the field of mechanics,
as Jonathan has occasionally pointed out to me, I am rather like a
traveler who has learned to ask questions in a foreign tongue, but not to
understand the answers.

"Well, I'll bring my sewing out here--or would you rather have me read to
you? There's something in the last number of--"

"No--get your sewing--blast that screw! Why doesn't it start?"

Evidently sewing was better than the last number of anything. I settled
myself under a lamp, while Jonathan, in the twilight beneath the sink,
continued his mystic rites, with an accompaniment of mildly vituperative
or persuasive language, addressed sometimes to his tools, sometimes to the
screws and nuts and other parts, sometimes against the men who made them
or the plumbers who put them in. Now and then I held a candle, or steadied
some perverse bit of metal while he worked his will upon it. And at last
the phoenix did indeed rise, the pump was again a pump,--at least it looked
like one.

"Suppose it doesn't work," I suggested.

"Suppose it does," said Jonathan.

He began to pump furiously. "Pour in water there!" he directed. "Keep on
pouring--don't stop--never mind if she does spout." I poured and he pumped,
and there were the usual sounds of a pump resuming activity: gurglings and
spittings, suckings and sudden spoutings; but at last it seemed to get its
breath--a few more long strokes of the handle, and the water poured.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Oh, fairly late--about ten--ten minutes past."

Instead of our walk, we stood for a moment under the big maples before the
house and looked out into a sea of moonlight. It silvered the sides of the
old gray barns and washed over the blossoming apple trees beyond the
house. Is there anything more sweetly still than the stillness of
moonlight over apple blossoms! As we went out to the barns to lock up,
even the little hencoops looked poetic. Passing one of them, we half
roused the feathered family within and heard muffled peepings and a
smothered _clk-clk_. Jonathan was by this time so serene that I felt I
could ask him a question that had occurred to me.

"Jonathan, how long _is_ three shakes of a lamb's tail?"

"Appa