“Thank you, sir,” said Clare. “I thought you would be kind to us! I’ve one friend, a bull, that’s very good to me. So is Jonathan. He’s a horse. The bull’s name is Nimrod. He wants to gore always, but he’s never cross with me.”
The blacksmith burst into a roar of laughter at the idiotic speech. Then he covered the fire with coal, threw his apron over Clare’s head, and departed, locking the door of the smithy behind him.
The boys looked at each other. Neither spoke. Tommy turned to the bellows, and began to blow.
“Ain’t you warm yet?” said Clare, who had seen his mother careful over the coals.
“No, I ain’t. I want a blaze.”
“Leave the fire alone. The coal is the smith’s, and he told us not to waste it.”
“He ain’t no count!” said Tommy, as heartless as any grown man or woman set on pleasure.
“He has given us a place to be warm and sleep in! It would be a shame to do anything he didn’t like. Have you no conscience, Tommy?”
“No,” said Tommy, who did not know conscience from copper. The germ of it no doubt lay in the God-part of him, but it lay deep. Tommy—no worse than many a boy born of better parents—was like a hill full of precious stones, that grows nothing but a few little dry shrubs, and shoots out cold sharp rocks every here and there.
“If you have no conscience,” answered Clare, “one must serve for both—as far as it will reach! Leave go of that bellows, or I’ll make you.”