There was a grinder, too, taken on at the same time, a short round-looking man, with plump cheeks, and small eyes which were often mere slits in his face. He had a little soft nose, too, that looked like a plump thumb, and moved up and down and to right and left when he was intent upon his work. He was the best-tempered man in the works, and seemed to me as if he was always laughing and showing his two rows of firm white teeth.
I somehow quite struck up an acquaintance with these two men, for while the others looked askant at me and treated me as if I were my uncle’s spy, sent into the works to see how the men kept on, Pannell the smith and Gentles the grinder were always ready to be civil.
My friendliness with Pannell began one morning when I had caught a mouse up in the office overlooking the dam, where I spent most of my time making drawings and models with Uncle Bob.
This mouse I took down as a bonne bouche for Pannell’s kitten, and as soon as he saw the little creature seize it and begin to spit and swear, he rested upon his hammer handle and stopped to watch it.
Next time I went into the smithy he did not flourish the white-hot steel round my head, but gave it a flourish in another direction, banged it down upon the anvil, and in a very short time had turned it into the blade of a small hand-bill.
“You couldn’t do that,” he said smiling, as he cooled the piece of steel and threw it down on the floor before taking out another.
“Not like that,” I said. “I could do it roughly.”
“Yah! Not you,” he said. “Try.”
I was only too eager, and seizing the pincers I took out one of the glowing pieces of steel lying ready, laid it upon the anvil and beat it into shape, forming a rough imitation of the work I had been watching, but with twice as many strokes, taking twice as long, and producing work not half so good.
When I had done he picked up the implement, turned it over and over, looked at me, threw it down, and then went and stroked his kitten, staring straight before him.