“Where has he gone?”
“Tin works.”
“Confounded old bear!” muttered Pradelle as he went out, after frowning severely at the old clerk, who did not see it.
“Idle young puppy!” grumbled Crampton, dotting an i so fiercely that he drove his pen through the paper. “I’d have knocked his hat off if I had had my ruler handy.”
Van Heldre was busy at work with a shovel when Harry Vine reached the tin-smelting works, which the merchant had added to his other ventures. He was beside a heap of what rather resembled wet coarsely ground coffee.
“Ah, Harry,” he said, “you may as well learn all these things. Be useful some day. Take hold of that shovel and turn that over.”
A strong mind generally acts upon one that is weak, and it was so here.
Harry felt disposed, as he looked at his white hands, the shovel, and the heap, to thrust the said white hands into his pockets and walk away.
But he took the shovel and plunged it in the heap, lifted it full, and then with a look of disgust said—
“What am I to do with it?”