“If you weight poverty with all those fine responsibilities, I suspect you'll break its back at once,” said Tom, laughing.
“Far from it. It is out of these self-same responsibilities that poverty has a backbone at all;” and the old man stood bolt upright, and threw back his head as though he were emblematizing what he had spoken of.
“Now, Tom, for business. Are you strong enough to come back here and look after the shaft?”
“Yes, I think so. I hope so.”
“I shall probably be some weeks away. I 'll have to go over to Holt; and I mean to run adown amongst the Cornwall fellows and show them some of our ore. I 'll make their mouths water when they see it.”
Tom bit off the end of his cigar, but did not speak.
“I mean to make Beattie a present of ten shares in that new shaft, too. I declare it's like a renewal of youth to me to feel I can do this sort of thing again. I 'll have to write to your father to come back also. Why should he live in exile while we could all be together again in affluence and comfort?”
Tom's eyes ranged round the bare walls and the shattered windows, and he raised his eyebrows in astonishment at the other's illusions.
“We had a stiff 'heat' before we weathered the point, that's certain, Tom,” said the old man. “There were days when the sky looked dark enough, and it needed all our pluck and all our resolution to push on; but I never lost heart,—I never wavered about our certainty of success,—did I?”
“No; that you did not. And if you had, I certainly should not have wondered at it.”