“When?” asked Jiggins, grinning a little.
“Any time after we’ve had a f-f-few minutes’ talk with him.”
“Do you know where he is?” Collins put in.
Mark looked at him a minute before he decided what to say. Then he says, “Honest to g-g-goodness, Mr. Collins, we don’t know exactly.”
“I see we’ll have to keep you right with us,” says Collins.
“And I’m glad of it,” says Jiggins. “Good company, eh? Surely. Enjoy ourselves. Never quarrel. You try to win; we try to win—no hard feelings.”
“That’s all right,” I says, “but do you think it’s very honest to try to get away Uncle Hieronymous’s mine?”
“Honest? Why not?” You could see he was really surprised. He couldn’t see why it wasn’t all right to buy a man’s land for a little bit of money when really it was worth a whole lot because there was a mine on it the owner didn’t know about. “D’you think I ought to tell him about the mine?” says he. “That’s bosh,” he says. “’Twouldn’t be business. If your uncle wants to know if there’s a mine on his land let him look for it. We had to.”
I suppose there was something to his side of it. He and Collins, or whoever it was they worked for, had found the mine, and it did look as if they ought to have something out of it. Uncle never would have found it. I tell you it’s pretty hard to judge other folks and say when they’re honest or dishonest. Mark says it depends a lot on the way you look at things or how you’ve been brought up. As for me, honest is honest and dishonest is dishonest, and I can’t quite get it into my head how anything makes it different. Maybe it does, though. At any rate, I couldn’t get to feeling Jiggins and Collins were bad.
We just dawdled along that day. When we stopped for dinner we took two or three hours to it and didn’t start out again till the hottest part of the afternoon was over.