It turned out that I hadn’t blown Marrick away, rather that he had been so startled by the onrushing air that he had staggered away and let go of the pillow. We set it up again, and this time it worked perfectly, well, a few feathers got out because holding the case on was problematic, but on the whole, it worked.
Marrick even suggested using a leather belt to cinch down on the case, preventing loss of feathers. He pulled a few workers out and set them up as a team. Loading the feathers, tying the bag, and operating the bellows. It didn’t take long for that team to outfill most of the rest of Marrick’s little factory.
Marrick ordered the machine moved inside and set up, even setting up a pulley and weight system on the bellows so that it lifted on its own. One or two men could just use their body weight to pump it down, and it reset itself.
Soon, the machine team was humming away, and Marrick complained that he only had one such machine.
“What I wouldn’t give to have three more of these!”
It was just a thing to say as he already knew the carpenter and leatherworker in town. It would just take more time to make more machines, especially since I wasn’t going to pay for it, this time.
Marrick did pay me, though, a bag each of the different bird feathers he used, a surprising number of varieties, at that. I expected hen, goose, and duck, but also got pigeon, pheasant, turkey, swan, stork, crane, crow, and thrush.
I returned back to Evelyn’s the next morning with all my feather bags.
“You again? I thought I was done with you?” she chided as she used my broom mold to stitch together a flat broom.
“Nice to see you, too.”