“Oh, but people often say they haven’t slept a wink when they’ve been snoring all the night. See how the fellows used to say it at Worksop. I never believed them.”
“But when father says it you may believe him, for when he has fits of the old jungle fever come back, I’m obliged to give him his doses to make him sleep.”
“Well I woke ever so many times wondering whether it was time to get up. Once the moon was shining over the sea, and it was lovely. It would have been a time to have gone off to Pen Ree Rocks congering.”
“Ugh, the beasts!” exclaimed Joe. “But, I say, what a thing it will be if the place turns out no good after all this trouble and expense.”
“Don’t talk about it,” said Gwyn. “But Sam says it’s right enough.”
“And Tom Dinass shakes his head and says—as if he didn’t believe it could be—that he hopes it may turn out all right, but he doubts it.”
“Tom Dinass is a miserable old frog croaker. Sam knows. He says there’s no doubt about it. The mine’s rich, and it must have been worked in the old days in their rough way, without proper machinery, till the water got the better of them, and they had to give it up.”
“I hope it is so,” said Joe, with a sigh. “But, I say, what about going down?”
“Your father won’t go down.”
“Oh, yes, he will. He says he shall go in the skep if your father does.”