“And I suppose there are a few other little things you do not know, my boy. There’s a deal to learn, Tom, and the worst or best of it is, that the more you find out the more you realise that there is no end to discovery. But so much for the blacksmith’s work.”
“But you are not a blacksmith, uncle.”
“Oh yes, I am, Tom, and a carpenter too. A bad workman I know, but I manage what I want. Then there is my new business too at the mill.”
“Steam mill, uncle?”
“Oh no, nor yet water. It’s a regular old-fashioned flour-mill with five sails. How shall you like that business?”
Tom looked harder at his uncle.
“Well, boy, do I seem a little queer? People down at Furzebrough say I am.”
“No, sir,” said Tom, colouring; “but all this does sound a little strange. Do you really mean that you have a windmill?”
“Yes, Tom, now. My very own, my boy. It was about that I came up yesterday—to pay the rest of the purchase-money, and get the deeds. Now we can set to work and do what we like.”
Tom tried hard, but he could not help looking wonderingly at his uncle, of whom he had previously hardly seen anything. He knew that he had been in India till about a year before, and that his mother had once spoken of him as being eccentric. Now it appeared that he was to learn what this eccentricity meant.