“Not far from that, sir:  and yet you’ll never see half the work.  Why, we had an army of navvies on it last autumn, and laid a foundation sixty feet deep and these first courses are all bonded in to the foundation, and bonded together, as you see.  We are down to solid rock, and no water can get to undermine us.  The puddle wall is sixteen feet wide at starting, and diminishes to four feet at the top:  so no water can creep in through our jacket.”

“But what are these apertures?” inquired Grotait.

“Oh, those are the waste-pipes.  They pass through the embankment obliquely, to the wear-dam:  they can be opened, or shut, by valves, and run off ten thousand cubic feet of water a minute.”

“But won’t that prove a hole in your armor?  Why, these pipes must be in twenty joints, at least.”

“Say fifty-five; you’ll be nearer the mark.”

“And suppose one or two of these fifty-five joints should leak?  You’ll have an everlasting solvent in the heart of your pile, and you can’t get at them, you know, to mend them.”

“Of course not; but they are double as thick as ever were used before; and have been severely tested before laying ’em down:  besides, don’t you see each of them has got his great-coat on? eighteen inches of puddle all the way.”

“Ah,” said Grotait, “all the better.  But it is astonishing what big embankments will sometimes burst if a leaky pipe runs through them.  I don’t think it is the water, altogether; the water seems to make air inside them, and that proves as bad for them as wind in a man’s stomach.”

“Governor,” said the engineer, “don’t you let bees swarm in your bonnet.  Ousely reservoir will last as long as them hills there.”

“No, doubt, lad, since thou’s had a hand in making it.”

The laugh this dry rejoinder caused was interrupted by the waitress bringing out tea; and these Hillsborough worthies felt bound to chaff her; but she, being Yorkshire too, gave them as good as they brought, and a trifle to spare.

Tea was followed by brandy-and-water and pipes:  and these came out in such rapid succession, that when Grotait drove Little and two others home, his utterance was thick, and his speech sententious.

Little found Bayne waiting for him, with the news that he had left Mr. Cheetham.

“How was that?”

“Oh, fell between two stools.  Tried to smooth matters between Cheetham and the hands:  but Cheetham, he wants a manager to side with him through thick and thin; and the men want one to side with them.  He has sacked me, and the men are glad I’m going:  and this comes of loving peace, when the world hates it.”

“And I am glad of it, for now you are my foreman.  I know what you are worth, if those fools don’t.”

“Are you in earnest, Little?”

“Why not?”

“I hear you have been dining with Grotait, and he always makes the liquor fly.  Wait till tomorrow.  Talk it over with Mrs. Little here.  I’m afraid I’m not the right sort for a servant.  Too fond of ‘the balmy,’ and averse to the whole hog.” (The poor fellow was quite discouraged.)