THE WATER-WORKS
sluices, and we did not drop the crow-bar into the lock either, as I have heard of being done by older and sillier people.
The water poured through the sluices all green and solid, as if it had been cut with a knife, and where it fell on the water underneath the white foam spread like a moving counterpane. When we had finished the lock we did the weir—which is wheels and chains—and the water pours through over the stones in a magnificent water-fall and sweeps out all round the weir-pool.
The sight of the foaming water-falls was quite enough reward for our heavy labors, even without the thought of the unspeakable gratitude that the bargees would feel to us when they got back to their barge and found her no longer a stick-in-the-mud, but bounding on the free bosom of the river.
When we had opened all the sluices we gazed awhile on the beauties of nature, and then went home, because we thought it would be more truly noble and good not to wait to be thanked for our kind and devoted action—and besides, it was nearly dinner-time, and Oswald thought it was going to rain.
On the way home we agreed not to tell the others, because it would be like boasting of our good acts.
"They will know all about it," Noël said, "when they hear us being blessed by the grateful bargees, and the tale of the Unknown Helpers is being told by every village fireside. And then they can write it in the Golden Deed book."
99
