'Will you come in and breakfast?' asked the other.
'What, with friend Fidus? no, thank'ee; I am not, by many degrees, honest enough to suit his book. He would be down on some little public peccadillo of mine before I had swallowed my first egg. Besides, I would not for worlds break the pleasure of your tête-à-tête.'
'Will you come down after dinner?'
'No; neither after dinner, nor before breakfast; not all the coffee, nor all the claret of the Bedford shall tempt me. Remember, my friend, you are paid for it; I am not.'
'Well, then, good morning,' said Alaric. 'I must go in and face my fate, like a Briton.'
Undy went on for a few steps, and then returned, as though a sudden thought had struck him. 'But, Tudor, I have bowels of compassion within me, though no pluck. I am willing to rescue you from your misery, though I will not partake it. Come up to me this evening, and I will give you a glass of brandy-punch. Your true miners never drink less generous tipple.'
'How on earth am I to shake off this incubus of the Woods and Works?'
'Shake him off? Why, make him drunk and put him to bed; or tell him at once that the natural iniquity of your disposition makes it necessary that you should spend a few hours of the day in the company of a sinner like myself. Tell him that his virtue is too heavy for the digestive organs of your unpractised stomach. Tell him what you will, but come. I myself am getting sick of those mining Vandals, though I am so used to dealing with them.'
Alaric promised that he would come, and then went in to breakfast. Undy also returned to his breakfast, well pleased with this first success in the little scheme which at present occupied his mind. The innocent young Commissioner little dreamt that the Honourable Mr. Scott had come all the way to Tavistock on purpose to ask him to drink brandy-punch at the Blue Dragon!
Another day went wearily and slowly on with Alaric and Mr. Neverbend. Tedious, never-ending statements had to be taken down in writing; the same things were repeated over and over again, and were as often contradicted; men who might have said in five words all that they had to say, would not be constrained to say it in less than five thousand, and each one seemed to think, or pretended to seem to think, that all the outer world and the Government were leagued together to defraud the interest to which he himself was specially attached. But this was not the worst of it. There were points which were as clear as daylight; but Tudor could not declare them to be so, as by doing so he was sure to elicit a different opinion from Mr. Neverbend.