They had changed names when they left Master Cuddington, that seeming wiser. “Godfrey the smith, and this is Joan.”
“Smith, now! Can you do this—and this?”
A middle aged woman called from the hut that adjoined. “Get them to stay, father, get them to stay! There be pilgrims a-horseback, coming by to-morrow!”
“Where would we dwell?”
The old man had a gnomish, elfin humour. “There’s a great empty palace yonder, waiting king and queen!” He pointed with a shaking forefinger to a hut a hundred yards away, close to the earth wave that rose in pale gold, green and purple and held it as in a cup. Sky hung a deep and serene blue, sunshine was sifted gold, spring flowerets bloomed on the wold and all the bees in the land were humming there. Lonely and could be well loved, the great wold! Godfrey the smith looked to Joan.
“Aye, I will it if you will it!”
Great wold and day and night, and the smithy with the older and the younger smith, and the lubberly boy that helped, and the few travellers and comers-by. Work done with satisfaction and the wold to rest in, walk in, by times. Hut of the old man and his daughter and the lubberly boy, hut of Joan and Godfrey, Emmy was the daughter’s name and she had second sight.
She took to Joan. “You’re eternal. He’s eternal, too. And so am I. Eternity—Eternity—Eternity.” She went off upon the word into her own visions.
May and June. “And it was a good day when you came!” quoth the old man in his throaty, under-earth voice. “Came to the palace, king smith and queen lace-woman!”
July, and the wold very rich, and the sunshine strong and the starry nights soft, immense, musing, brooding, tender. The wold was a world, away in space from sister worlds, yet throwing bridges across, invisible as spider’s thread in sunshine. July—August. Gold on the wold, gold in the sky, gold and sapphire.