Daphne told him. "It was the first thing she heard when she landed in England. She is frantic about him, and is coming down here to-day. She has offered to sleep anywhere, do anything, if only she may come. Jack, isn't it too heavenly?" Daphne positively crowed.
Juggernaut's teeth flashed across his grimy countenance in a sympathetic smile.
"You women!" he said softly. "We must fish him out for her after this, Daphne. Well, Mrs Entwistle?"
A middle-aged woman with hungry eyes was at his elbow. She was Amos Entwistle's wife.
"Would you come and speak to old Mr Entwistle, sir?" she said—"my man's father. He is too rheumatic to move about easy, but he seems to have something on his mind about another way of getting at them."
Sir John Carr turned and followed her promptly.
"Shall I come too, dear?" said Daphne.
"Better not. Go and send Walker to me if you can find him."
Mrs Entwistle conducted Juggernaut to a sunny nook, sheltered from the keen breeze, against the brickwork of the power-house. Here sat Entwistle senior, stone-deaf, almost blind, but with his eighty-year-old wits still bright and birdlike.
He was no respecter of titles or employers, this old gentleman, and in high-pitched, senile tones he criticised the arrangements for rescue. The excavatory operations were a mistake. Time was being wasted. The poor lads inside had nobbut a little water to drink and nowt to eat. The air would be getting foul, too.