Sol was for sending Betty to her new home till supper 204 time, intending himself to go back to the smithy with Phil and get down to the heavy work that lay there awaiting completion. But Phil and Jim would have none of it. And when Betty and Mrs. Clunie backed them up, there was nothing left for Sol to do but to obey; so, with three or four hand-bags––half of them borrowed––they were bundled into the Kelowna stage, and nothing more was heard of them for two weeks.
Smiler attended to his own needs as he had had to do often before, and he was back in the basement of the Chinese restaurant in Wynd Alley, finishing his dinner sampling,––with his new rig-out rolled up in a bundle under his arm and garbed in his much beloved rags and tatters.
That was the first of a dozen occasions upon which Smiler was dressed up by various well-meaning members of the community and it was the first of twelve occasions that Smiler resented the interference and went back, at the earliest opportunity, to his old, familiar and well-ventilated draperies.
The next fourteen days were desperate ones for Phil. From the moment he got back to the smithy, repair work piled in on him. Reapers and binders gave way in various parts and had to be put to rights at once, for it was nearing the end of the harvest season and the cold weather was already creeping along. Every horse in the Valley seemed suddenly to require reshoeing; wagon springs broke; buggy tires came off or wore out as they had never done before; morning, noon and night Phil slaved trying to cope with the emergency. There was no help that he could call in, and he would not for worlds have sent word to Sol to end his holiday a moment sooner that might be.
He snatched his meals when and where he could, while everyone clamoured for the immediate execution of his requirements. Finally Phil got up so early and he 205 worked so late, that he made his bed for the time being on a bundle of straw covered with sacking, in a corner beside the forge.
He was young and strong, and he knew his work. He loved the rush of it and he gloried in the doing of things that other men would have groaned at. Above all, he was glad to think that he was now considered of some value in a work-a-day community.
It did not occur to him that day and night labour, even for a little time, had a terribly wearing effect on the physique; that he was losing weight with every twenty-four hours of it and that his cheeks grew paler and a little more gaunt every day of that week or so of extra push.
He chased Jim from the smithy as a worthless time-waster––whenever that worthy showed face––and Jim, for the nonce, had to find companionship and entertainment in his world of Penny Dreadful creation and his Love Knot Untanglements.
One glorious gleam of sunshine burst in on Phil’s world of toil and set his muscles dancing and his heart singing in merry time to the ring of his hammer on the anvil. A perfumed note, bearing an invitation to him from Eileen Pederstone to attend a reception on the sixth evening of the month following, at her new home on the hill, was the dainty messenger of joy.
And what cared Phil if Brenchfield should be there? He had held his own before;––he could do it again. What counted all this hard work?––a puff of wind;––he was going to Eileen Pederstone’s. What matter it how the world wagged?––a tolling bell;––he would dance again with the dainty, little vision with the merry brown eyes, the twinkling feet and the ready tongue. Ho!––life was good; life was great! Life was heaven itself!