“You?” Dan looked half inclined to resent the liberty. But Polly saw that there was something coming.
“Would you mind telling us what it’s all about?” she asked. “You look as if you knew something nice.”
“I do; it’s one of the nicest things I ever knew in my life. I didn’t tell you 188 the other day, did I, that I had made most of my money in mines?”
“No,” said Polly, wondering why he should want to tell them how he made “his old money.”
“Well, that is the case; nearly all in one mine, too. It’s a great placer mine up north. I don’t suppose you know much about placer mines?”
Polly, disclaiming such knowledge, tried to look politely interested, while Dan’s interest, fortunately for his manners, was very genuine. Was he not to be a mining engineer, and did he not want to learn all he could?
“Well,” Mr. Clapp went on, “a placer mine is one where the gold lies embedded in the soil and has to be washed out, and if there doesn’t happen to be running water near by it costs an awful lot to bring it in.”
“Yes,” said the polite Polly, with a vision of a fire-brigade running about with buckets in their hands, as they used to do in Fieldham.
“What they call hydraulic mining,” Dan put in. 189
“Yes, that’s it. Big ditches to be dug, and all that sort of thing. Well, this ‘Big Bonus Mine’ was discovered twenty years ago. A company was started and the stock was put on the market at a dollar a share. The management made a mess of it, as a management usually does, and it fizzled out. It was believed that the thing was chock-full of gold, but they couldn’t get it out.”