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Updated: June 15, 2025
Farmer Joll looked at Taffy with a shyness that was comic. "Shall we?" "Mr. Raymond will be tired enough already," his wife suggested. "Not a bit," declared Taffy; and hoisting Bob on his back, he set off furiously prancing after the farmer. By dinner-time he and the family were fast friends, and after dinner the farmer took him off to be introduced to Mendarva the Smith.
There's Joll's Farm close by; Farmer Joll would board and lodge en for nine shillings a week, and glad of the chance; and he could come home for Sundays." Mr. Raymond, as soon as he reached home, sat down and wrote a letter to Mendarva the Smith and another to Farmer Joll. Within a week the bargains were struck, and it was settled that Taffy should go at once.
Half a minute later Taffy stood by the door of the forge, listening to the echoes of Aide-de-camp's canter, and the palm of his hand tingled where her foot had rested. He took leave of Mendarva and the Jolls just before Christmas. The smith was unaffectedly sorry to lose him. "But," said he, "the Dane will be entered for the championship next summer, so I s'pose I must look forward to that."
Mendarva's forge stood on a triangle of turf beside the high-road, where a cart-track branched off to descend to Joll's Farm in the valley. And Mendarva was a dark giant of a man with a beard like those you see on the statues of Nineveh. On Sundays he parted his beard carefully and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet ribbon; but on week days it curled at will over his mighty chest.
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.
The whole thing'll have to come down in the end; you mark my words." "But, these repairs?" Taffy interrupted: "You'll be wanting hands." "Why, o' course." "And a foreman a clerk of the works " While Mendarva was telling his tale, over a hill two miles to the westward a small donkey-cart crawled for a minute against the sky-line and disappeared beyond the ridge which hid the towans.
The clergyman did most of the talking; but now and then the old gentleman in the velvet cap interposed a question about the church at home, its architecture, the materials it was built of, and so forth; or about Taffy's own work, his carpentry, his apprenticeship with Mendarva the Smith. And to all these questions the boy found himself replying with an ease which astonished him.
You must send the boy to someone that'll teach en smithy-work. There's no sense in this cold hammering." "Wheelwright Hocken holds his shop and cottage from the Squire." "Why not put the boy to Mendarva the Smith, over to Benny Beneath? He's a first-rate workman." "That is more than six miles away." "No matter for that.
"He's a bellows of a man. I do hear he's heating up th' old Squire Moyle's soul to knack an angel out of en. He'll find that a job and a half. You mark my words, there'll be Dover over in your parish one o' these days." During work-hours Mendarva bestowed most of his talk on Taffy. The Dane seldom opened his lips except to join in the anvil chorus "Here goes one Sing, sing, Johnny!
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