Chapter Thirty Two.
The Doctor’s Dictum.
“It’d take a month,” said the gardener, as Glyn was coming up. “Don’t tell me! Should think I know more about wells than you do. Fast as you take a bucketful out another one runs in. You go and tell him that if he means to have the old well emptied we shall want half-a-dozen men, for we could never do it by oursens.”
“Yah!” cried Wrench; “such fellows as you gardeners are. It’s always the same old tune: more help, more help.—Hear him, Mr Severn, sir? I expect the water isn’t so clear as it has been, and the Doctor says he will have the well emptied and cleaned out.—Look here, Taters, you can go and tell the Doctor that if you like; I am going to work.”
“Oh, I shan’t tell him,” growled the gardener. “I aren’t afraid of a bit of wuck; only, mark my words, as I says again, it’d take a month.”
The unusual task did not take a month; but after a hard day’s toil so little progress had been made, and Wrench’s indoor work had come to such a standstill, that the Doctor gave orders for the gardener to get the assistance of a couple of labouring men, when the water was so much lowered at the end of the next day that unless a great deal filtered in during the coming night there was a fair prospect of the bottom being reached before long.
By a tacit understanding with the Doctor, Glyn was excused from lessons during the clearing out of the well, and spent his time watching the emptying of every bucketful as it was wound slowly up; and it was put about by Slegge that Glyn had been planted there by the Doctor to keep the juniors off for fear any of them should tumble down.
It was an anxious task for the boy, who had to resist appeal after appeal made by Singh to come and join him in some sport or go for a walk. But Glyn kept fast to his post, watching in vain, and without much hope, for if the case was there it would probably be sunk in the mud. One hour he found himself full of faith in the belief that there was something in his dream, and the next he thought that it was all nonsense.
And so the days passed on, with Glyn paying constant visits to the well-house, where Wrench went on toiling away; while, in spite of the sloppiness of the place, his big tom-cat came regularly to perch himself upon a shelf, and with his big eyes looking fierce and glowing in the semi-darkness of
