“And—but I fear I speak to deaf ears—do they never impress you?” said the Wheel.
“Enormously,” said the Waters. “We have already learned six refined synonyms for loafing.”
“But (here again I feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the wholly animal—ah—rumination of bovine minds and the discerning, well-apportioned leisure of the finer type of intellect?”
“Oh, yes. The bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no bones about it when it’s shouted at. We’ve seen that—in haying-time—all along the meadows. The finer type is wide awake enough to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when its excuses aren’t accepted. Turn over!”
“But, my good people, no gentleman gets stuffy as you call it. A certain proper pride, to put it no higher, forbids—-”
“Nothing that he wants to do if he really wants to do it. Get along! What are you giving us? D’you suppose we’ve scoured half heaven in the clouds, and half earth in the mists, to be taken in at this time of the day by a bone-idle, old hand-quern of your type?”
“It is not for me to bandy personalities with you. I can only say that I simply decline to accept the situation.”
“Decline away. It doesn’t make any odds. They’ll probably put in a turbine if you decline too much.”
“What’s a turbine?” said the Wheel, quickly.
“A little thing you don’t see, that performs surprising revolutions. But you won’t decline. You’ll hang on to your two nice red-strapped axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like—a—like a leech on a lily stem! There’s centuries of work in your old bones if you’d only apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this head of water is about as efficient as a turbine.”