“Is it only a week, uncle?” said Tom. “Why, it seems to me as if I had been here for a month.”
“So long and tedious, boy?”
“Oh no, uncle,” said Tom confusedly. “I meant I seem to have been here so long, and yet the time has gone like lightning.”
“Then you can’t have been very miserable, my boy?”
“Miserable!” cried Tom.
That was all; and Uncle Richard turned the conversation by pointing to the roof.
“There,” he said, “that used to swing round easily enough with the weight of those huge sails, which looked so little upon the mill, but so big when they are down. It ought to move easily now, boy.”
Tom tried, and found that the whole of the wooden top glided round upon its pivot with the greatest ease.
“Yes, that’s all very well,” said his uncle, “but it will have to be disconnected from the mill-post. I shall want that to bear the new glass.”
“That?” said Tom, gazing at the huge beam which went down through the floor right to the basement of the mill.