Old Neville brings his head round to listen.
"It's an extraordinary thing about women," goes on Mr. Horrington, planting his stick in the dust as he marches, and keeping his eyes on the toes of his boots which lean up in sympathy. "It's an extraordinary thing, which you must have noticed, that a woman will give you a hammer and a couple of odd-sized nails, send you to the wood-heap and say—'Produce me Saint Paul's Cathedral.'"
"Did you ever do it for them?" says the old man. "How's your wife? Is she standing the heat better this year? Maud will be along this afternoon, she was saying."
"My wife will be glad to see her. She gets too lonely there with me engaged away all day. I don't think she is going to be a bit better this year than last. Every day she finds a new complaint. Last night she had a pain in the back brought on by the washing. Mrs. Niven gave her some iodine, and I painted her before bed. This morning she says she can taste the iodine. Really, I have sympathized myself to a standstill."
You reach the first of the firewood stacks, and as you shun it on the right, a path leans to the left hand to the main path and wanders a little downhill and across the flat to the hotel. Along this path Mr. Horrington branches every morning.
Mr. Robson, underground manager, stands by the engine shed, scratching his chest reflectingly with a slow, lank hand. He is tall and narrow and dreary-looking, with a big round hat like a halo on his head, and a lean tuft of beard at his chin. He comes to life with a jerk as Mr. Neville and Mr. King round the corner of the firewood stack.
"Mr. King says you had the last of the sawn timber a week back, and there's not another foot of it on the place. What have ye done with it, man?" shouts Neville from the distance.
Mr. Robson grows taller and leaner, and jerks his body at many angles and plucks his beard, and nearly stirs himself to anger and immediately grows meek again. "That's gone re-timbering the bottom of the shaft. There's a lot of work done there, and there wasn't much timber."
"There was timber, I tell you. Mr. King says so too. You let the men take it from you to build their camps with. You are a fool. You'll have to wake up. Look at that feller in the engine house! If he goes on spilling grease like that he'll have the Company bankrupt."