“Well, I measured the rope, sir. When the Doctor bought a new one for it, just a year ago, he let me fit it on instead of getting the workpeople in. That cost nothing, and the men would have made a regular job of it.”
“But I meant the water. How deep is the water itself?”
“Oh, the water, sir. That gets to be about twenty or thirty feet in the winter-time; but in the summer it gets very low—in the dry time, you know. I don’t suppose there’s above six or eight feet in now.”
“But I say,” cried Glyn, “set up for yourself? Why, you’re not going to start a school?”
“School, sir?” said the man, laughing. “’Tain’t likely! No, sir; me and somebody—never you mind who—is going to be married one of these days, when we have saved up enough, and we are going to take a house at the seaside and let lodgings to visitors who come down for their health. Why, a well of water like that would be the making of us.”
“Oh!” cried Glyn, with his eyes twinkling. “You with your somebody and your never mind who! Why, I have found you out, Wrenchy. I know who the lady is.”
“Lady she is, sir,” said the man sharply, “and right you are, though she’s only poor and belongs to my station of life. But, begging your pardon, with all your Latin and Greek and study, you haven’t found that out.”
“That I have,” cried Glyn. “It’s the cook.”
The man turned scarlet and stood gazing at the boy with his mouth a little way open.
“Why, who telled you, sir?” he stammered at last.