Dorothy's hand sought his involuntarily "Never that Tom, never that."
"I should have thought there was an unseen hand beckoning, me hither. This great expanse of water, so still, when the clouds brood over it, so sullen, so seeming peaceful confined, so terrible for infinite woe if it should I o'erleap its barrier, has cast its spell over me."
"Well, Tom, then--as we are such old friends."
"Yes, Miss Dorothy, my heart misgives me about this slumbering giant. I doubt the strength of his chains. See here"--and he led toward the centre of the embankment. "Where we stand the surface is nearly a yard lower than the mouth of the culvert."
"It is the safety valve of the reservoir."
"You see, when the reservoir gets over full the excess should go down the culvert. As things are it would begin to overflow just where we stand. Indeed, more than once when the wind has set this way, I've seen the water trickle over here. Let that trickle be but continuous and a rill would become a gap, the gap a yawning aperture and this huge burthen of Nature's most innocent fluid would hurl itself down the valley, and what or who could withstand it!"
"But, Tom, whose duty is it to see to these things?"
"The Commissioners. Your uncle is one of them."
"Oh! I will speak to him, I promise you, and that right urgently. Would you, could you speak instead of me? Uncle is very wroth with me these days, and, oh! Tom, life is so dree at Wilberlee, I could find it in my heart at times to cry my very eyes out. And it's all your fault."
"Yes, yours, Tom why couldn't you let uncle alone with your horrid law. You know he will have his own way, and, I think, your having been his apprentice makes it more galling."
"And a workhouse brat at that," said Tom, bitterly.
"Oh! never think of that, Tom. No one does. I don't, and I don't care if I do. It isn't that: but uncle cannot bear to be thwarted. Can't you let it drop?"
"Faith, I'd only be too glad. But it is Mr. Tinker that attacked me, and there is only one way to stop the law that I know of. Your uncle must give the word. But he wont, and I can't."
"Couldn't you just let him have his own way; it will please him, and it won't hurt you, nor your precious Co-op either."