“Best listen to the old clock, for all that, Cilla. It doesn’t go fast, but it goes for a long while. Well, there’s a deal to be done, if I’m to get off by Tuesday o’ next week.”
He took a last glance at Cilla, at the house-place, at the lilac frock that lay on the ironing-board; and without a word he stepped out into the dusty street. And, after he had gone, Priscilla of the Good Intent sat down at the table, and laid her head on it, and sobbed bitterly; but whether the tears were for David, or for herself, she did not know.
David went down the street. He carried a big air; and his face, if sad at all, wore only the dignity of grief, none of its meanness or self-pity.
He found Billy leaning against the door of the forge. Billy, thinking the more because he said so little, had watched the smith go up the street, had divined his errand by the same instinct which befriended him in his comradeship with birds and beasts; and now he knew from one glance at David’s face what was in the doing.
“You’ll be leaving this right pleasant spot, David the Smith?”
David was too accustomed to the other’s intuition to feel surprise. “Ay, I’m leaving Garth. And, lad, I’ve something to say to ye.”
“Well, then, have ye a fill o’ baccy, an’ may be a lile match or so to light yond same? Smoke’s a fearful help to a daft body’s head-piece.”
The smith waited till Billy was drawing tranquil puffs—and indeed no man in Garth knew better how to smoke a pipe with true respect—then put a hand against the smithy wall, and leaned there, a figure of strength and of self-reliance.
“I shouldn’t like the forge to pass into other hands, Billy. There’s been one o’ my name here since the Year One, or nigh about, and ’twouldn’t be seemly-like, to see another name above the door. Now, see ye, lad, suppose we called it play, ye and me, to set ye here as master-smith? ’Tis ever so much more play-work than blowing bellows, come to think on’t.”
“Te-he!” laughed Billy. “Am I to play wi’ all your big, fine tools, David?”