“I believe you, my boy!” returned his grandfather. “Come and live with me, and you shall!”
“But who would buy them when I had worked them?”
“If nobody had the sense, we'd put 'em up before the cottage!”
“Like a door-lock on a prayer-book!”
“No matter! They would be worth the worth of themselves!”
“You would have to make the wall so high, there would be no light in the house!” persisted Richard.
“Tut, man! did you never hear of a joke? All I say is, that if you'll come and work with me—I don't need to slave more than I like; I've got a few pounds in the bank!—if you'll work, I'll teach you. Leave me to find a fit place for what comes of it! They do most things at the foundries now, but there's a market yet for hammer-work—if it be good enough, and not too dear; for them as knows a good thing when they sees it, ain't generally got much money to buy things. It's my opinion the only way to learn the worth of a thing, is to have to go without it.”
“Few people fancy iron gates, I fear.”
“More might fancy them if they were to be had good,” returned the old man.
The gate had admitted them to a long winding road, with clumps of trees here and there on the borders of it. The road was apparently not much used, for it was more than sprinkled with grass all over. A ploughed field was on one side, and a wild heathy expanse, dotted with fir-trees, on the other. Suddenly on the side of the field, gradually on that of the heath, the ground changed to the green sward of a park.