“How long will he be?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where has he gone?”
“Tin works,” said Crampton, resuming his writing.
“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 though the paper. “I’d have knocked his hat off if I had had my ruler handy. Now what does he want, I wonder?”
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. Tell me what you think of it.”
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 in his pocket and walk away.