Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.

“Business is business—­eh, what?”

Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.  A deaf director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden fierceness:  “It’s disgraceful!” He was obviously letting off the fume of long-unuttered disapprovals.  One perfectly neat, benevolent old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice—­that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string—­murmured:  “We must make all allowances,” and started an anecdote about his youth.  He was gently called to order by his secretary.  Scorrier was asked for his opinion.  He looked at Hemmings.  “My importance is concerned,” was written all over the secretary’s face.  Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier answered, as if it were all settled:  “Well, let me know when you are starting, Hemmings—­I should like the trip myself.”

As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave, twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside.  “Glad to hear you say that about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful—­Pippin’s such a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there—­a bit heavy in the hand, um?”

Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.  The secretary was sea-sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for ever; it was sonorous and fine—­the prostration of superiority; and the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the caves of his experience, was truly interesting.

Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take them to the mines.

He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.  His manner to Hemmings was full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on the secretary’s armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.  To Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection: 

The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up like a boy out of school.  “So I’m going to get a wigging,” he said; “I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew—­if you only knew...!  Out here they’ve nicknamed me ’the King’—­they say I rule the colony.  It’s myself that I can’t rule”; and with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier had never seen in him:  “Why did they send this man here?  What can he know about the things that I’ve been through?” In a moment he calmed down again.  “There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!” and with a long, kind look into Scorrier’s face, he hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind the bars of his courteous irony.  Intuition of danger had evidently smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit.  There were moments when Scorrier’s common-sense sided with Hemmings—­these were moments when the secretary was not present.