“See ye, then, Billy”—blowing the bellows gently—“is it work to make yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive ’em? Play, I call it, and I’ve a mind, now I come to think on’t, just to keep ye out o’ the game, and go on playing it myself.”
Billy drew nearer, with an anxious look. “Ye wouldn’t do that, or ye’d not be blacksmith David,” he said, with unerring knowledge of the other’s kindliness. “Te-he! ’Tis just a bit o’ sporting—I hadn’t thought of it i’ that light.”
And soon he was blowing steadily; for the lad’s frame was a giant’s, when he chose to use it, and no fatigue had ever greatly touched him. From time to time, as the blacksmith paused to take a red-hot bar from the furnace or to put a cold one in, he would nod cheerfully at Billy the Fool and emphasize the frolicsome side of his employment.
“Ye’ve an easy time, Billy,” he would say. “See me sweating here at beating iron into horseshoe shape—and ye playing at chasing sparks all up the chimley!”
The sweat was pouring from Billy, too, by this time, but he did not heed. Plump and soft his laugh came, as he forced the sparks more swiftly from the coals.
“Was born for playtimes, I, David,” he cried in great delight. “I’ve heard tell of silver spoons, popped unbeknownst-like into babbies’ cradles. I war a babby o’ that make, I reckon, for sure ’tis I’m always playing, when I’m not always idling in between times.”
“Ye were lucky fro’ birth,” David answered, driving the hole for the last nail. “Some folk is, while other-some must work.”
“Why do ye work, David?” asked the other, with entire simplicity.
“Oh, just a fancy, lad. Seems as I have to, somehow. There were no silver spoons dropped into my cradle. Hive o’ bees swarmed there, I fancy, for I’ve had a few in my bonnet ever since.”
There was another silence, while Billy the Fool, working hard at the bellows, looked long and meditatively at David Blake.