'Oh, how lovely!' she cried. 'You don't mean to say you made that yourself?'
For the efforts of Joe and Bobby at carpentry were generally of a very rough description.
'Of course I did. Do you reckon I'd get the village joiner to fix it? Precious much good he'd be at a job like this, the clumsy old idiot! But the wheel's nothing. Come over here, and you'll see what it turns!'
'A grindstone! How splendid! Why, it's going round ever so fast when you put on that catch!'
'I can grind your pen-knife for you, if you like,' suggested Archie magnanimously. 'I'd admire to do it.'
'Haven't got one,' said Peggy sadly. 'I lost mine out of my pocket the other day, when I fell into the stream.'
'Ah! girls have such stupid pockets, they never can keep anything in them. Never mind, perhaps this will be more in your line;' and lifting up a lid, he showed a tiny churn, calculated to fill the feminine soul with rapture.
'You could put some cream in that, and make enough butter for your tea,' he said, when Peggy had exhausted her list of admiring adjectives. 'I'll let you do it some time, if you want. But if you like the churn, what do you think of this, now?' And, stooping forward, he moved a switch, and the strains of a little musical-box were heard playing 'The Last Rose of Summer' with wonderfully correct time and tune.
'You'll never persuade me you made that, too!' cried Peggy, turning upon him with wide-open eyes.
'Indeed I did!' laughed Archie. 'Oh, it's not so difficult, after all. See, I'll show it to you. It's only made with pins set round in a circle on a piece of board, with a nail on a pivot in the centre to revolve round and strike them. The hard part of it was to set the pins just right. You see, the shortness or longness of them makes the difference in the notes, and the distance between gives the time. It took me a jolly long while to puzzle it all out, I can tell you!'