Ingleby's heart was throbbing a good deal faster than usual, but he held himself in hand. Miss Coulthurst was apparently pleased to see him, but there was an indefinite something in her serene graciousness which put a check on him. It was, he felt, perhaps only because she was patrician to her finger-tips that she had so frankly greeted him. A girl with less natural distinction could, he fancied, scarcely have afforded to be equally gracious to a wharf-labourer.
"I am at present loading railway cars with tea and silk, though I have been carrying sugar bags most of the day," he said.
Grace showed no sign of astonishment as she glanced at his toiling comrades, and, though this was doubtless the correct attitude for her to assume, Ingleby was, in spite of his opinions, not exactly pleased until she spoke again.
"Don't you find it rather hard work?" she said. "Of course, one cannot always choose the occupation one likes here, but couldn't you find something that would be a little more—profitable?"
Ingleby laughed. "I'm afraid I can't," he said. "In this city the one passport to advancement appears to be the ability to play in the band, and I was, unfortunately, never particularly musical. Still, there is no reason why I should trouble you with my affairs. I wonder if I might venture to ask you how you came to be here?"
"It is quite simple. Major Coulthurst was appointed Gold Commissioner in one of the mining districts, and I came out with him; but he has been sent to an especially desolate post in the Northern ranges, and I am staying with friends in the city for a week or two. Then I am going to join him."
She stopped a moment, and then looked at him reflectively. "Why don't you go North and try your fortune at prospecting, too? They have been finding a good deal of gold lately in the Green River country where my father is."
It had seemed to Ingleby almost unnatural that he should be so quietly discussing his affairs with the girl he had last seen nearly six thousand miles away. This was not the kind of meeting he would have anticipated; but as she made the suggestion a little thrill once more ran through him, for he had heard that the district in question was a great desolation, and it almost seemed that she desired his company. However, he shook off the notion as untenable, for there would be, he knew, a distinction between a placer miner and the Gold Commissioner's daughter even in that land of rock and snow.
"I have thought of it," he said. "Some day I may go, but it is at the far end of the province, and for one who works on a steamboat wharf the getting there is a risky venture. I don't suppose everybody finds gold."
"I'm afraid they don't, and the cost of transporting provisions is a serious matter to those who fail. In fact, some of them have been giving my father trouble. They appear to lay the blame of everything on the mining regulations."