“Go back to my work.”
“Never to that old-wife-trade?” cried the blacksmith. “Look here, Richard!” he said, and bared his upper arm, “there's what the anvil does!” Then he bent his shoulders, and began to wheeze. “And there's what the bookbinding does!” he continued. “No, no; you turn in with me, and we'll show them a sight!—a gentleman that can make his living with his own hands! The country shall see sir Wilton Lestrange's heir a blacksmith because he wouldn't be a snob and deny his own flesh and blood!—'I saw your son to-day, sir Wilton—at the anvil with his grandfather! What a fine fellow he do be! Lord, how he do make the sparks fly!'—If I had him, the old sinner, he should see sparks that came from somewhere else than the anvil!—You turn in with me, Richard, and do work fit for a man!”
“Grandfather,” answered Richard, “I couldn't do your work so well as my own.”
“Yes, you could. In six weeks you'll be a better smith than ever you'd be a bookbinder. There's no good or bad in that sort of soft thing! I'll make you a better blacksmith than myself. There! I can't say fairer!”
“But don't you think it better not to irritate my father more than I must? I oughtn't to torment him. As long as I was here he would fancy me braving him. When I am out of sight, he may think of me again and want to see me—as Job said his maker would.”
“I don't remember,” said Barbara. “Tell me.”
“He says to God—I was reading it the other day—'I wish you would hide me in the grave till you've done being angry with me! Then you would want to see again the creature you had made; you would call me, and I would answer!' God's not like that, of course, but my father might be. There is more chance of his getting over it, if I don't trouble him with sight or sound of me.”
“Well, perhaps you're right!” said Simon. “Off with you to your woman's work! and God bless you!”