“Well, that’s what it amounts to,” persisted the Waters. “We see a good deal of the minor graces of life on our way down to our job.” “And—but I fear I speak to deaf ears—do they never impress you?” said the Wheel. “Enormously,” said the Waters. “We have already learned six refined synonyms for loafing.” “But (here again I feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the wholly animal—ah—rumination of bovine minds and the discerning, well-apportioned leisure of the finer type of intellect?” “Oh, yes. The bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no bones about it when it’s shouted at. We’ve seen _that_—in haying-time—all along the meadows. The finer type is wide awake enough to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when its excuses aren’t accepted. Turn over!” “But, my good people, no gentleman gets stuffy as you call it. A certain proper pride, to put it no higher, forbids—-” “Nothing that he wants to do if he really wants to do it. Get along! What are you giving us? D’you suppose we’ve scoured half heaven in the clouds, and half earth in the mists, to be taken in at this time of the day by a bone-idle, old hand-quern of your type?” “It is not for me to bandy personalities with you. I can only say that I simply decline to accept the situation.” “Decline away. It doesn’t make any odds. They’ll probably put in a turbine if you decline too much.” “What’s a turbine?” said the Wheel, quickly. “A little thing you don’t see, that performs surprising revolutions. But you won’t decline. You’ll hang on to your two nice red-strapped axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like—a—like a leech on a lily stem! There’s centuries of work in your old bones if you’d only apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this head of water is about as efficient as a turbine.” “So in future I am to be considered mechanically? I have been painted by at least five Royal Academicians.” “Oh, you can be painted by five hundred when you aren’t at work, of course. But while you are at work you’ll work. You won’t half-stop and think and talk about rare plants and dicky-birds and farinaceous fiduciary interests. You’ll continue to revolve, and this new head of water will see that you do so continue.” “It is a matter on which it would be exceedingly ill-advised to form a hasty or a premature conclusion. I will give it my most careful consideration,” said the Wheel. “Please do,” said the Waters gravely. “Hullo! Here’s the Miller again.” The Cat coiled herself in a picturesque attitude on the softest corner of a sack, and the Rat without haste, yet certainly without rest, slipped behind the sacking as though an appointment had just occurred to him. In the doorway, with the young Engineer, stood the Miller grinning amazedly.