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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.
Mendarva knew or speculated upon everybody, and with half the passers-by broke off work and gave the time of day, leaning on his hammer.
We are living here by her favour. A cottage will do only it must have four rooms, because of grandmother. . . . I will step over and talk with Mendarva. He may be able to give me a job. It will keep me going, at any rate, until I hear from the agency." "You forget that I have over forty pounds a year or, rather, mother has. The capital came from the sale of her farm, years ago."
"That's beautiful," Honoria went on. "I stopped Mendarva the other day, and he told me wonders about you. He says he tried you with a hard-boiled egg, and you swung the hammer and chipped the shell all round without bruising the white a bit. Is that true?" Taffy nodded. "And your learning the Latin and Greek, I mean; do you still go on with it?"
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.
From his smithy window Mendarva spied Taffy coming along the road, and stepped out on the green to shake hands with him. "Pleased to see your face, my son! You'll excuse my not asking 'ee inside; but the fact is" he jerked his thumb towards the smithy " we've a-got our troubles in there." It came on our youth with something of a shock that the world had room for any trouble beside his own.
"Thank 'ee, ma'am, I don't care if I do," said he; and ten minutes later they were all seated at supper and discussing the fall in wheat in the most matter-of-fact voices. Only their faces twitched now and again. "I hear you had the preacher down to Joll's last night," said Mendarva the Smith. "What'st think of en?" "I can't make him out," was Taffy's colourless but truthful answer.
"'Tis the Dane. He went over to Truro yesterday to the wrastlin', an' got thrawed. I tell'n there's no call to be shamed. 'Twas Luke the Wendron fella did it in the treble play inside lock backward, and as pretty a chip as ever I see." Mendarva began to illustrate it with foot and ankle, but checked himself, and glanced nervously over his shoulder. "Isn' lookin', I hope?
"Did it?" said Taffy grimly. "You forget that I have never been told. Well, that's good, so far as it goes. But now I'll step over and see Mendarva. If only I could catch this cowardly lie somewhere on my way!" He kissed his mother, caught up his cap, and flung out of the house. The sea breeze came humming across the sandhills.
Mendarva began a long tale, the sum of which was that the light-house had begun of late to show signs of age, to rock at times in an ominous manner. The Trinity House surveyor had been down and reported, and Mendarva had the contract for some immediate repairs. "But 'tis patching an old kettle, my son. The foundations be clamped down to the rock, and the clamps have worked loose.
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