He and Ira were sitting, huddled beside the oil heater, in the parlour of the boarding house where Ira Rubenstein rented his cheap room. Both young men had successfully passed their final examinations in May and were now qualified mining engineers. Ira, however, having returned to New York to spend the summer vacation with his parents, was now back at Harvard to complete his masters degree. Upon graduation Paolo had agreed, with a reluctance he concealed, not wishing to appear ungrateful, to work for six months at the offices of Dunleavy and Company, Mining Consultants. ‘We’ll call it an apprenticeship, shall we?’ Paul Dunleavy had joked. ‘An apprenticeship that starts you at the top—not many graduates get a chance at that, eh?’ And Paolo had to admit that he would be a fool to refuse such an opportunity. To Paul Dunleavy the offer had meant only one thing. Dunleavy and Son, Mining Consultants. After six months in a position of power and with such a proposal put to him, the boy could hardly yearn for the tin sheds of the Golden Mile and a life in the field with the simple miners of Kalgoorlie.
