"
"Not like turbines? Me? My dear fellows, turbines are good for fifteen
hundred revolutions a minute--and with our power we can drive 'em at full
speed. Why, there's nothing we couldn't grind or saw or illuminate or heat
with a set of turbines! That's to say if all the Five Watersheds are
agreeable."
"Oh, we've been agreeable for ever so long."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
"Don't know. Suppose it slipped our memory."
The Waters were holding themselves in for fear of bursting with mirth.
"How careless of you! You should keep abreast of the age, my dear fellows.
We might have settled it long ago, if you'd only spoken. Yes, four good
turbines and a neat brick penstock--eh? This old Wheel's absurdly out of
date."
"Well," said the Cat, who after a little proud seclusion had returned to
her place impenitent as ever. "Praised be Pasht and the Old Gods, that
whatever may have happened _I_, at least, have preserved the Spirit of the
Mill!"
She looked round as expecting her faithful ally, the Black Rat; but that
very week the Engineer had caught and stuffed him, and had put him in a
glass case; he being a genuine old English black rat. That breed, the
report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown
variety.
End of Project Gutenberg's Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES ***
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