“Ah then, he does something else sometimes, eh?”
Mrs Potter’s reply was interrupted by Tommy himself emerging from a closet, which formed his workshop and in which he was at that time busy with a model of Winstanley’s lighthouse, executed from the drawings and descriptions by his father, improved by his own brilliant fancy.
Four years make a marked difference on a boy in the early stage of life. He was now nearly ten, and well grown, both intellectually and physically, for his age.
“Well, Tommy, how d’ee git on wi’ the light-’ouse?” asked his father.
“Pretty well, faither: but it seems to me that Mr Winstanley had too many stickin’-out poles, an’ curlywurleys, an’ things o’ that sort about it.”
“Listen to that now,” said Mrs Potter, with a look of contempt, as they all sat down to supper: “what ever does the boy mean by curlywurleys?”
“You’ve seed Isaac Dorkin’s nose, mother?”
“Of course I ’ave: what then?”
“Well, it goes in at the top and out at the middle and curls up at the end: that’s curlywurley,” said Tommy, with a grin, as he helped himself to a large potato.
“The boy is right, Martha,” said John, laughing, “for a lighthouse should be as round an’ as smooth as a ship’s bow, with nothin’ for wind or water to lay hold on. But now I’ll tell ’ee of this noo situation.”