"All right, then; and as to wages—-"
"Never mind about the wages, sir, thank you," said Geo respectfully; "whatever you give the others will do for me. I'm ready any time."
"Well, off with your coat, then, and come."
Geo had his coat off and hung up in the tent in a trice, and was carefully lowered into the well, seated astride on a board, one hand on the rope and in the other a pail.
"Now, then, Lummis," said the director, when he was sufficiently deep down the reach the débris, "hook your pail on to the hook on your board, and lean over and pick off carefully anything you can reach. Be careful to bear no weight on anything or the whole thing will collapse."
"I understand, sir," said Geo, his voice sounding strangely hollow to himself from the depths of the well.
Carefully and dexterously Geo detached bricks, and with a small scoop ladled the earth into his pail, and as soon as it was filled he detached it from his board and hooked it on to another hook that dangled from the windlass; and while it was being drawn up, emptied and returned, he raised himself to a sitting posture and stretched his back as best he could, for he had not been long at work before his limbs ached considerably with their unwonted toil. Two hours went by, and still Geo worked on patiently, and often painfully, till the director blew his whistle, and he was hauled up for a welcome rest. Then one of the other men was lowered, and so the work went on, and by nightfall an immense quantity of soil had been removed, but as yet the men below had given no sign.
It was during this long terrible time of suspense that Mr Rutland learned part of the secret of Tom Chapman's love of his apparently feckless, untidy wife. Annie still remained untidy, it is true—she had never been anything else—but she certainly was not feckless.
As soon as it was daylight each morning she appeared, asking only the most absolutely necessary questions, and receiving the dispiriting answers without a murmur. At seven o'clock she would go home, give the children their breakfast, and get them ready for school; but she was back again at her post before long, there to wait and do any little kind acts or odd jobs for the men, and going on any little errands into the village. In spite of her evident suffering she kept up a brave, even cheerful appearance. Punctually as the school broke up she went away again for a couple of hours. The doctor, to his great surprise, found her to be clever with her fingers, quick to learn how to bind up a cut or bathe a bad bruise; for the work of the rescuers was no easy task, and in their determined efforts to let nothing drop they often did themselves little trifling injuries which were all the better for being treated at once. Everybody was very kind to her, and her boy Tom up at the Union was getting through his fever well. There were crumbs of comfort to be gathered on the way, and Annie was not the woman to refuse them.
She too had shared the doctor's surprise when Geo Lummis appeared on the scene as an eager recruit, but unlike the doctor, she showed no sign of it; and when Geo stepped into the tent to hang up his coat, she smiled at him such an entirely approving, grateful, and encouraging smile, that it for the moment wiped out the doctors scorn. Geo knew Tom Chapman, and did not care about him; but for the sake of Tom's wife, he felt now that he would risk anything to restore her husband to her.