They open up the office between eight and nine of a morning, and Mr. King, accountant, pushes up the window before finding his seat behind the table at the far end; while Mr. Carroll, timekeeper, a mild elderly man, takes the broom from behind the door and meekly strokes the floor from end to end. He, too, then finds his seat. The day's work begins pleasantly, with not undue wear and tear, as is the genial custom at Surprise. The satisfying swish of ledger pages and the scratch of pens are all the sounds to wake the spiders in their webs in the high corners.
But ruder sounds will break that cloistral peace. Old Neville, stick in hand, the first pipe of the day in his clutch, steps down that way from breakfast on most mornings of the week as a start on the daily round.
"Hey!" cries he, waving his stick in at the doorway of a sudden, "What sawn timber have we on hand?"
Mr. King, at his ledger at the far end, thinks a long moment and makes answer. "They had the last from the store a week ago. There's nothing on the place until the next waggon is in."
Half-way down, Mr. Carroll, at his time sheets, feels his chin and deprecates the whole affair.
"There's not a team due for three week. Someone is a fool on the lease, and he'll not be far from here. You'd have the place stuck up between the lot of you."
"I made a memo we were running out a month back," says Mr. King, very even tempered, and twisting his moustache a little. "They have got through that last lot very soon."
"Robson is a fool," breaks in the old man, wagging his head and coming into the office. "I'll put him to the right-about pretty quick one of these mornings. Goodness! Look under the shelf there. You've a colony of white ants come. Ye'd have the place eaten down. Carroll, get the kerosene, and give it them right away. Are you on anything that won't keep, King? I'm going underground in a few minutes. Ye might come along and see what's become of that sawn timber. You'll find Mrs. Robson has told Robson to board her kitchen with it. I'll have it up agen, if I handle the crowbar myself. I may be wrong, huh! huh!"
"It gets hot early in the morning now," says Mr. King, rising slowly, and leaning across to the wall for his hat.
When you take the left-hand pathway at the office door, which leads towards the poppet-legs standing up stiff half-a-mile away, and the firewood stacks near the engine-house—when you take this path, you begin to pass by much of interest. Mrs. Boulder camps here, and stands at her doorway to remark who goes down the red path. Beyond her camp two bachelors, beneath a sheet of calico on poles. Two stretchers stand there, two boxes for seats, and among some ashes outside is a forked stick thrust into the ground on which a billy hangs.