“Wrong? Oh no, uncle; that stuff has all turned to silver plainly enough,” cried Tom.
“True, boy, but my instructions tell me that the result ought to be a bright metallic surface of a golden rosy hue, and that a very little polishing should make it brilliant.”
“Perhaps this will be,” said the Vicar, “when it is polished.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Uncle Richard. “There is a hitch somewhere. Either I have made some error in the quantities of my chemicals, or I have left the glass in the solution too long, with the result that the silver has become coated with the dirty-looking precipitation left when the metallic silver is thrown down. However, we are very near success, and we’ll polish and see what result we get. Now, Tom, up into the laboratory, and bring down from the second shelf that small bottle of rouge, the packet of cotton-wool, and the roll of fine chamois leather. One moment—the scissors too, and the ball of twine.”
Tom ran up-stairs, found the articles required, and was about to descend, when, glancing from the window, he caught sight of Pete Warboys, who had raised himself by getting his toes in some inequality of the wall, and was now resting his folded arms upon the top and his chin upon them, staring hard at the mill.
“Oh, how I should like to be behind him with a stick!” thought Tom; and he laughed to himself as he turned away and went down, to find that his uncle had just uncovered the great speculum they had ground and polished, where it stood upon a stout shelf at the far side of the workshop, and was pointing out its perfections to the Vicar.
“Yes, Brandon,” said the latter, “I suppose it is very beautiful in its shaping, but to me it is only a disc of glass. So you are going to silver that?”
“When I am sure of what I am doing,” replied Uncle Richard. “I must experimentalise once or twice more first. Here, Tom, set those things down and come here. I don’t like this glass to lie upon the shelf. We’ll lay a board down here, and turn the speculum face downwards upon the floor.”
Tom hurried to his uncle’s side, and after the board had been laid upon the floor, and covered with a soft cloth and several sheets of paper, the speculum was carefully lifted, turned over face downwards, covered with another cloth, and left close to the wall.
“No fear of that falling any farther,” said Uncle Richard, smiling, as he crossed the workshop deliberately. “Now for the polishing.”