Whack'n till he's red
Whack'n till he's dead
And whop! goes the widow with a brand new ring!
and when the boy took a hammer and joined in, he fell silent. Taffy soon observed that a singular friendship knit these two men, who were both unmarried. Mendarva had been a famous wrestler in his day, and his great ambition now was to train the other to win the County belt. Often, after work, the pair would try a hitch together on the triangle of turf, with Taffy for stickler; Mendarva illustrating and explaining, the Dane nodding seriously whenever he understood, but never answering a word. Afterwards the boy recalled these bouts very vividly—the clear evening sky, the shoulders of the two big men shining against the level sun as they gripped and swayed, their long shadows on the grass under which (as he remembered) the poor self-murdered woman lay buried.
He thought of her at night, sometimes, as he worked alone at the forge: for Mendarva allowed him the keys and use of the smithy overtime, in consideration of a small payment for coal, and then he blew his fire and hammered with a couple of candles on the bench and a Homer between them; and beat the long hexameters into his memory. The incongruity of it never struck him. He was going to be a great man, and somehow this was going to be the way. These scraps of iron—these tools of his forging—were to grow into the arms and shield of Achilles. In its own time would come the magic moment, the shield find its true circumference and swing to the balance of his arm, proof and complete.
ἐν δ' ἐτίθει ποταμοῖο μέγα σθένος Ὠκεανοῖο ἄντυγα παρ' πυμάτην σάκεος πύκα ποιητοῖο
XVI
LIZZIE AND HONORIA
His apprenticeship lasted a year and six months, and all this while he lived with the Jolls, walking home every Sunday morning and returning every Sunday night, rain or shine. He carried his deftness of hand into his new trade, and it was Mendarva who begged and obtained an extension of the time agreed on. "Rather than lose the boy I'll tache 'en for love." So Taffy stayed on for another six months.
He was now in his seventeenth year—a boy no longer. One evening, as he blew up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on the form of a woman standing just outside the window and watching him. He had no silly fears of ghosts; but the thought of the buried woman flashed across his mind and he dropped his pincers with a clatter.