“’Tis only me,” said the woman. “You needn’t to be afeard.” And he saw it was the girl Lizzie.
She stepped inside the forge and seated herself on the Dane’s anvil.
“I was walking back from prayer-meeting,” she said. “’Tis nigher this way, but I don’t ever dare to come. Might, I dessay, if I’d somebody to see me home.”
“Ghosts?” asked Taffy, picking up the pincers and thrusting the bar back into the hot cinders.
“I dunno: I gets frightened o’ the very shadows on the road sometimes. I suppose, now, you never walks out that way?”
“Which way?”
“Why, towards where your home is. That’s the way I comes.”
“No, I don’t.” Taffy blew at the cinders until they glowed again. “It’s only on Sundays I go over there.”
“That’s a pity,” said Lizzie candidly. “I’m kept in, Sunday evenings, to look after the children while farmer and mis’ess goes to Chapel. That’s the agreement I came ’pon.”
Taffy nodded.