“Oh, father!” I said, “I shall have plenty of time for amusement; let’s see if I can’t help you now.”
He looked more and more pleased as he heard my words.
“No,” he said, “not yet. You shall have a look round first for a few days, and perhaps you may be able quietly to pick up the cause of something that is troubling me a great deal.”
“Troubling you, father!” I said.
“Yes, my lad, troubling me, for things are not going as I could wish. ’Tis just as if, as fast as I get a few steps forward, someone pulls me back.”
“But I thought the mine was very prosperous, father?” I said.
“So it is, my boy, and I am getting it better and better; but there is always mischief being done, or else some accident occurs, and I can’t tell how.”
“Do you suspect anybody?”
“Well, er—no!” he said emphatically. “But, there—never mind now. I’m busy with some calculations; go and have a look round.”
I left his office and had “a look round,” the place seeming to have far more interest for me than it had before. Men were busy wheeling broken ore and taking it from one heap to another; the great pump was hard at work sucking out water; and the wheel was winding up buckets of produce from out of the deep shaft.