“You are, quite right,” Tavernake confessed, shortly. “I know I was a fool—a fool! If I could think of any adjective that would meet the case, I'd use it, but there it is. I chucked things and I came here. You haven't come down to tell me your opinion of me, I suppose?”
“Not by any manner of means,” Pritchard admitted. “I came down first to tell you that you were a fool, if it was necessary. Since you know it, it isn't. We'll pass on to the next stage, and that is, what are you going to do about it?”
“It is in my mind at the present moment,” Tavernake announced, “to leave here. The only trouble is, I am not very keen about London.”
Pritchard nodded thoughtfully.
“That's all right,” he agreed. “London's no place for a man, anyway. You don't want to learn the usual tricks of money-making. Money that's made in the cities is mostly made with stained fingers. I have a different sort of proposal to make.”
“Go ahead,” Tavernake said. “What is it?”
“A new country,” Pritchard declared, altering the angle of his cigar, “a virgin land, mountains and valleys, great rivers to be crossed, all sorts of cold and heat to be borne with, a land rich with minerals—some say gold, but never mind that. There is oil in parts, there's tin, there's coal, and there's thousands and thousands of miles of forest. You're a surveyor?”
“Passed all my exams,” Tavernake agreed tersely.
“You are the man for out yonder,” Pritchard insisted. “I've two years' vacation—dead sick of this city life I am—and I am going to put you on the track of it. You don't know much about prospecting yet, I reckon?”
“Nothing at all!”