During the continuance of the frost he had, however, to divert his imagination into other channels, as the beach was impracticable; and really, I think, the distraction did him no harm. Being confined much to the house, he turned his thoughts to an old invention of his for cleaning chimneys, with which he had competed ages ago for a prize offered by a syndicate of anti-climbing-boy philanthropists. I am sure, if simplicity and economy counted for anything, Uncle Jenico ought easily to have come out first; but it was the usual story of showiness being preferred to plain utility. The contrivance was homeliness itself; just a huge compressible ball of wool, attached through its centre to the middle of a cord of indefinite length; and the only objection to it--which was, after all, an extremely idle one--was that it required two operators, one to stand on the roof, and the other on the hearth below. But, once they were in a position, the task was a pastime rather than a labour. The top-sawyer, so to speak, lowered one end of the cord, weighted, down the flue; his companion seized it, and between them they worked the ball up and down till every particle of soot was dislodged. Could anything be more obvious? And yet the committee rejected it! Well, all I can say is that Harry and I proved its efficacy beyond a doubt; though, of course, Mrs. Puddephatt, while she benefited by it, was sarcastic about an invention which had failed to recommend itself to the particularity of London. “It _may_ be all right,” she would say; “and so may the himage of a piece of fat pork pulled up and down one’s throat with a string, which, I am told, is hemployed at sea to encourage ’eaving. At the same time, sir, I may venture to remark, that there are remedies known to Londoners to be worse than their diseases.” Uncle Jenico, in the first instance, secretly inveigled Fancy-Maria into helping him in his experiment. The parlour fire was extinguished, and the worthy girl despatched to the roof through a trap-door, where she performed her share of the task with such inflexible tenacity that when my uncle tugged at his end of the cord, which she had dutifully lowered, he pulled her head into the chimney, and would have ended by drawing her bodily down, I believe, if her gasps and chokings reaching him below had not warned him in time. Then he slackened his hold, and commended her excess of loyalty and instructed her further; but in the end she descended from the roof an absolute negress, and for days afterwards shed soot from her boots and sneezed it from her hair in little clouds that flavoured everything.