“It really do seem a burnin’ shame to have the poor unfort’nate bird lyin’ on his back and kickin’ at the clouds, and that, too, on the day of the parish feast. What will folk say of us? That we’ve no public spirit left. The farmers might get up a subscription. Would it be so amazin’ expensive? Would they have to scaffold all the tower up, and to the top of the spire?”
“That’s the way masons ’ud set about it,” said Jack Westcott contemptuously.
“And pray how ’ud sailors do it?”
“Swarm up,” said Jack.
“Get along! That wouldn’t do it.”
“Yes, it would, I bet a guinea. I might, but you——” The sailor shrugged his shoulders.
“For the matter of that,” observed the builder, after musing a while, “I don’t see but what it might be done, and done at no terrible cost. There’s a sort of a window on each side of the spire, and I suppose it would be possible to run out planks and make a sort of a platform and set up a ladder agin the steeple.”
“Would it not be dangerous?”
“Oh, of course there’s nothing in that way without danger. But if it has to be done, it can be done.”