Mr. Batchel laid down his pen, with a sigh, and followed Wardle to the front of the house. His guest had made three large holes, each about two feet square, and drawing Mr. Batchel to the nearest of them, said “Look there.”
Mr. Batchel looked. He saw nothing, and said so.
“Nothing?” exclaimed Wardle with impatience. “You see the bottom of the hole, I suppose?”
This Mr. Batchel admitted.
“Then,” said Wardle, “kindly look and see whether you cannot see something else.”
“There is apparently a cylindrical object lying across the angle of your excavation,” said Mr. Batchel.
“That,” replied his guest, “is what you are pleased to call nothing. Let me inform you that the cylindrical object is a piece of thick lead pipe, and that the pipe runs along the whole front of your house.”
“Gas-pipe, no doubt,” said Mr. Batchel.
“Is there any gas within a mile of this place?” asked Wardle.
Mr. Batchel admitted that there was not, and felt that he had made a needlessly foolish suggestion. He felt safer in the amended suggestion that the object was a water-pipe.