“What’s the culvert for?” asked Dorothy.
“It is the safety valve of the reservoir.”
“I’m afraid I’m rather stupid.”
“You see, when the reservoir gets over full the excess should go down the culvert. As things are it would begin to overflow just where we stand. Indeed, more than once when the wind has set this way, I’ve seen the water trickle over here. Let that trickle be but continuous and a rill would become a gap, the gap a yawning aperture and this huge burthen of Nature’s most innocent fluid would hurl itself down the valley, and what or who could withstand it!”
“But, Tom, whose duty is it to see to these things?”
“The Commissioners. Your uncle is one of them.”
“Oh! I will speak to him, I promise you, and that right urgently. Would you, could you speak instead of me? Uncle is very wroth with me these days, and, oh! Tom, life is so dree at Wilberlee, I could find it in my heart at times to cry my very eyes out. And it’s all your fault.”
“My fault!” he repeated.
“Yes, yours, Tom why couldn’t you let uncle alone with your horrid law. You know he will have his own way, and, I think, your having been his apprentice makes it more galling.”
“And a workhouse brat at that,” said Tom, bitterly.