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“There has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans. They jabber inordinately. I haven’t yet been able to arrive at their reason for existence.” The Cat yawned.

“A couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all about the walls. Wires protected by some abominable composition, ending in iron brackets with glass bulbs. Utterly useless for any purpose and artistically absolutely hideous. What do they mean?”

“Aaah! I have known four-and-twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza,” said the Cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer at the Mill Farm. “It means nothing except that humans occasionally bring their dogs with them. I object to dogs in all forms.”

“Shouldn’t object to dogs,” said the Wheel sleepily…. “The Abbot of Wilton kept the best pack in the county. He enclosed all the Harryngton Woods to Sturt Common. Aluric, a freeman, was dispossessed of his holding. They tried the case at Lewes, but he got no change out of William de Warrenne on the bench. William de Warrenne fined Aluric eight and fourpence for treason, and the Abbot of Wilton excommunicated him for blasphemy. Aluric was no sportsman. Then the Abbot’s brother married … I’ve forgotten her name, but she was a charmin’ little woman. The Lady Philippa was her daughter. That was after the barony was conferred. She rode devilish straight to hounds. They were a bit throatier than we breed now, but a good pack: one of the best. The Abbot kept ’em in splendid shape. Now, who was the woman the Abbot kept? Book–Book! I shall have to go right back to Domesday and work up the centuries: Modo per omnia reddit burgum tunc–tunc–tunc! Was it burgum or hundredum? I shall remember in a minute. There’s no hurry.” He paused as he turned over silvered with showering drops.

“This won’t do,” said the Waters in the sluice. “Keep moving.”

The Wheel swung forward; the Waters roared on the buckets and dropped down to the darkness below.

“Noisier than usual,” said the Black Rat. “It must have been raining up the valley.”

“Floods maybe,” said the Wheel dreamily. “It isn’t the proper season, but they can come without warning. I shall never forget the big one–when the Miller went to sleep and forgot to open the hatches. More than two hundred years ago it was, but I recall it distinctly. Most unsettling.”

“We lifted that wheel off his bearings,” cried the Waters. “We said, ‘Take away that bauble!’ And in the morning he was five mile down the valley– hung up in a tree.”

“Vulgar!” said the Cat. “But I am sure he never lost his dignity.”

“We don’t know. He looked like the Ace of Diamonds when we had finished with him…. Move on there! Keep on moving. Over! Get over!”

“And why on this day more than any other,” said the Wheel statelily. “I am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external pressure to keep it up to its duties. I trust I have the elementary instincts of a gentleman.”

“Maybe,” the Waters answered together, leaping down on the buckets. “We only know that you are very stiff on your bearings. Over, get over!”

The Wheel creaked and groaned. There was certainly greater pressure upon him that he had ever felt, and his revolutions had increased from six and three-quarters to eight and a third per minute. But the uproar between the narrow, weed-hung walls annoyed the Grey Cat.

“Isn’t it almost time,” she said plaintively, “that the person who is paid to understand these things shuts off those vehement drippings with that screw-thing on the top of that box-thing.”

“They’ll be shut off at eight o’clock as usual,” said Rat; “then we can go to dinner.”

“But we shan’t be shut off till ever so late,” said the Waters gaily. “We shall keep it up all night.”

“The ineradicable offensiveness of youth is partially compensated for by its eternal hopefulness,” said the Cat. “Our dam is not, I am glad to say, designed to furnish water for more than four hours at a time. Reserve is Life.”