The new chimney stood at the southeast corner of the great four-story mill, and close beside the little brick engine house. Alma led the youthful son of science out of the gate, down the road a few rods, and then they passed a stile, and took the winding path that straggled over the pastures to the mill.
Of course they talked volubly. This being the stern and prosy record of applied science, it becomes us not to report the chatterings of these two till they reached the base of the vast brick chimney, towering nearly eighty feet into the air above them. Its long shadow lay like a stiffened snake upon the fields, and Elmer, observing it, said:
"Good! We can use the shadow, too, and have double proof."
"How?" said the bright one, in a beautiful spirit of inquiry.
"If an upright stick, a foot long, casts a shadow three feet long, the shadow of another stick beside it, at the same time, is proportionally long."
"I knew that before. That isn't very high science."
"Why did you say 'how'?"
"Because I didn't think. Because I was a goose."
"Such terms are not choice, and are devoid of truth. Here! stern duty calls. Do you hold one end of the tape at the foot of the chimney, and I'll measure off the base line of our triangle."
Alma was charmed to be of use, and sat on a stone with the brass ring of the tape on her ring finger next her engagement ring, and her hand flat against the first course of bricks. Trifles sometimes hint great events. Little did she think that the plain brass ring on her finger was the hard truth of science that should shiver her gold ring to fragments and pale its sparkling diamond. Being a wholesome creature, and not given to romance, she thought nothing about it, which was wise. Her cousin, the knight of the theodolite, set his instrument upright upon the grass, and then ran the measuring line out to its full length.