“I like that,” said Barbara. “Will it take you long to get into the way of your old work?”

“I don’t think it will,” answered Richard, “and I believe I shall do better at it now. I was looking at some of it yesterday morning, and was surprised I should have been pleased with it. In growing myself, I have grown to demand better work—better both in idea and execution.”

“It is horrid to have you go,” said Barbara. “But I will think you up to God every day, and dream about you every night, and read about you in every book. I will write to you, and you will write to me—and—and”—she was on the point of crying, but would not—“and then the old smell of the leather and the paste will be so nice!”

She broke into a merry laugh, and the crisis was over. They walked together to the smithy.

Fierce was the wrath of the blacksmith. But for the presence of Barbara, he would have called his son-in-law ugly names. His anger soon subsided, however, and he laughed at himself for spending indignation on such a man.

“I might have known him by this time!” he said. “—But just let him come near the smithy!” he resumed, and his eyes began to flame again. “He shall know, if he does, what a blacksmith thinks of a baronet!—What are you going to do, my son?”

“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 is! Lord, how he does make the sparks fly!’—If I had him, the old sinner, he should see sparks that came from somewhere else than the anvil!—You come work 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.”

“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 taunting him. When I am out of sight, he may think of me again and want to see me. There is more chance of his getting over it, if I don’t trouble him with sight or sound of me.”