'That's what we mean,—ain't it, Crinkett?' said Adamson. 'You're boss here?'
'Yes, I'm boss.'
'And a deuced good time you seem to have of it,' said Crinkett.
'I've nothing to complain of,' replied Caldigate, feeling himself at the moment to be the most miserable creature in existence.
It was fearful work,—work so cruel that his physical strength hardly enabled him to support it. He already repented his present conduct, telling himself that it would have been better to have treated the men from the first as spies and enemies;—though in truth his conduct had probably been the wisest he could have adopted. At last he had the men inside the hall door, and, introducing them hurriedly to his father, he left them that he might rush up to his wife's bedroom. The nurse was there and her mother; and, at the moment, she only looked at him. She was too wise to speak to him before them. But at last she succeeded in making an opportunity of being alone with her husband. 'You stay here, nurse; I'll be back directly, mamma,' and then she took him across the passage into his own dressing-room. 'Who are they, John? who are they?'
'They are men from the mines. As they were my partners, I have asked them to come in to breakfast.'
'And the woman?' As she spoke she held on to the back of a chair by which she stood, and only whispered her question.
'No woman is with them.'
'Is it the man,—Crinkett?'
'Yes, it is Crinkett.'