"I'm on the morning shift this week, and Mother Janet she said: 'Giles,' she said, 'the brother of your young master came late last night for a bed.'"
"Job, what do you say to that?" shouted the blacksmith above the pulsating of the bellows, and with the sharp white lights of the leaping flames on his laughing face.
"Say! That they're a pack of liars!" said the mason, catching up his untempered chisels and flinging out of the smithy.
When he had gone, Gubblum removed his pipe and said calmly: "He's ower much like his Bible namesake in temper—that's the on'y fault of Job."
The parson, in the field outside, had stood in the turn-rows, resting on his plow-handles. He had been drawling "Bonny lass, canny lass;" but, catching the sound of angry words, he had paused and listened. When Job, the mason, flung away, he returned to his plowing, and disappeared down the furrow, the boy whistling at his horse's head.
"Why, Mattha, it is thee?" said the blacksmith, observing for the first time the second of the new-comers; "and how fend ye?"
"Middling weel, John, middling weel," said Matthew, in a low voice, resting on the edge of the trough.
It was Laird Fisher, more bent than of old, with deeper lines in his grave face and with yet more listless eyes. He had brought two picks for sharpening.
"Got your smelting-house at wark down at the pit, Mattha?" asked the blacksmith.
"Ey, John, it's at wark—it's at wark."