“Exactly.”
“Then, now, let’s talk about something else.”
“No,” said Deering, firmly. “I must show you first that I was not so rash and foolish as you think. Mrs Lee, may I clear this table?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Aunt Hannah, rather stiffly. “Vane, my dear, will you move the lamp to the chimney.”
Vane lifted it and placed it on the mantelpiece, while Mr Deering moved a book or two and the cloth from the round low table, and then opening a padlock at the end of the long round tin case, he drew out a great roll of plans and spread them on the table, placing books at each corner, to keep them open.
“Here,” he said, growing excited, “is my invention. I want you all to look—you, in particular, Vane, for it will interest you from its similarity to a plan you had for heating your conservatory.”
Vane’s attention was centred at once on the carefully drawn and coloured plans, before which, with growing eagerness, their visitor began to explain, in his usual lucid manner, so that even Aunt Hannah became interested.
The idea was for warming purposes, and certainly, at first sight, complicated, but they soon grasped all the details, and understood how, by the use of a small furnace, water was to be heated, and to circulate by the law of convection, so as to supply warmth all through public buildings, or even in houses where people were ready to dispense with the ruddy glow of fire.
“Yes,” said the doctor, after an hour’s examination of the drawings; “that all seems to be quite right.”
“But the idea is not new,” said Vane.