THREE:"Anything might happen," the Clockwork man continued, plaintively, "I feel as though I might slip again, you knowslip back another thousand years or so." He turned again. "I've got to get worse before I get[Pg 159] better," he sighed, and then stopped to examine the rows of bottles arranged along the shelves.Now, the afternoon was very warm and very still. Where they stood the only sounds that could reach them were the slight crack of the batted ball, and the soft padding of the fielders.[Pg 15] That was why the thing that happened next could hardly be mistaken. It began by the strange figure suddenly putting both hands upon the top of the hurdle and raising himself up about an inch off the ground. He looked all at once enormously alive and vital. Light flashed in his eyes.
FORE:Allingham burst out into a great roar of laughter; but Gregg merely smiled and listened.
THREE:Its name comes from three words, "jin," meaning man; "riki," power; and "sha," carriage: altogether it amounts to "man-power-carriage." It is a little vehicle like an exaggerated baby-cart or diminutive one-horse chaise, and has comfortable seating capacity for only one person, though it will hold two if they are not too large. It was introduced into Japan in 1870, and is said to have been the invention of an American. At all events, the first of them came from San Francisco; but the Japanese soon set about making them, and now there are none imported. It is said that there are nearly a hundred thousand of them in use, and, judging by the abundance of them everywhere, it is easy to believe that the estimate is not too high. The streets are full of them, and, no matter where you go, you are rarely at a loss to find one. As their name indicates, they are carriages drawn by men. For a short distance, or where it is not required to keep up a high speed, one man is sufficient; but otherwise two, or even three, men are needed. They go at a good trot, except when ascending a hill or where the roads are bad. They easily make four and a half or five miles an hour, and in emergencies can do better than the last-named rate.
FORE:At noon they had gone twenty-five miles through a country which abounded in villages and gardens, and had a great many fields of wheat, millet, cotton, and other products of China; the fields were not unlike those they had seen on their voyage up the Yang-tse; and as for the villages, they were exactly alike, especially in the items of dirt and general repulsiveness. The modes of performing field labor were more interesting than the villages; the most of the fields were watered artificially, and the process of pumping water attracted the attention of the boys. An endless chain, with floats on it, was propelled through an inclined box by a couple of men who kept up a steady walk on a sort of treadmill. There were spokes in a horizontal shaft, and on the ends of the spokes there were little pieces of board, with just sufficient space for a man's foot to rest. The men walked on these spokes, and steadied themselves on a horizontal pole which was held between a couple of upright posts. Labor is so cheap in China that there is no occasion for employing steam or wind machinery; it was said that a pump coolie was able to earn from[Pg 359] five to ten cents a day in the season when the fields needed irrigation, and he had nothing to do at other times.Keeling went to his office on the following Monday morning, with his mind already made up about the extension of his business. He had an option on a big building site at the neighbouring manufacturing town of Nalesborough, and this he determined to exercise at once, and have put in hand, without delay, the erection of his new premises. His trade seemed to have reached its high-water mark here in Bracebridge, but the creation of a similar business elsewhere would occupy him for a dozen years yet, and what was more to his immediate purpose, give him a piece of critically important work now. Last summer he had more than half resolved to turn the Bracebridge Stores into a company, and, leaving Hugh as the director, himself retire from business, and enjoy among his books the leisure of which all his life he had had so little. Now his one desire was to set this new enterprise going, and thereby gain for himself not the leisure that lately he coveted, but the absorption which he hoped the work of organisation would bring him. It would be an immense task, and that was why he undertook it, for he had no desire any more for unoccupied hours, in which he could browse in{327} the pastures of his secret garden. What he wanted was work, work of the kind that kept him so busy all day, that he had no further energy left for thought. He proposed to continue directing the course of his Bracebridge business also: with these two to superintend, he surely would find stupefaction for those bees of the brain whose bitter honey-making he had no use for.
THREE:"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse lifted his head austerely.
FORE:If you want to know I will tell you, he said."Oh! tell it, please," said the two boys, in a breath.
THREE:Ah, I should get a good scolding if I treated Lady Keeling like that, he said.
FORE:"Stop XI," continued the Clockwork man, in tones of sharp instruction. "Press hard. Then wind Y 4 three times."But it was not to be yet. That was the burden of their subdued murmurings. It couldn't be done on Arthur's present income, and he was still less certain than ever that it could be regarded as cumulative or even permanent. Rose understood. To her country-bred mind it was marvellous that Arthur should succeed in adding up so many figures during the course of a day, even though the result did not always meet with the approval of the bank authorities. They would have to wait.
