“I want to have a little talk with your father. Just step out in a minute or so, and let me have half-an-hour.”
“Yes, sir, certainly.”
I then went to the other end of the shop, for, curiously, as it seemed to me, although father and son were on the best of terms, they always worked as far from each other as the shop would permit, and it was a very large room.
“It is not easy always to keep warm through and through, Thomas,” I said.
I suppose my tone revealed to his quick perceptions that “more was meant than met the ear.” He looked up from his work, his tool filled with an uncompleted shaving.
“And when the heart gets cold,” I went on, “it is not easily warmed again. The fire’s hard to light there, Thomas.”
Still he looked at me, stooping over his work, apparently with a presentiment of what was coming.
“I fear there is no way of lighting it again, except the blacksmith’s way.”
“Hammering the iron till it is red-hot, you mean, sir?”
“I do. When a man’s heart has grown cold, the blows of affliction must fall thick and heavy before the fire can be got that will light it.—When did you see your daughter Catherine, Thomas?”