At the end of six weeks, Richard could shoe a sound horse as well as his grandfather. The old man had taken pains he would not have spent on an ordinary apprentice—it was worth doing, he said, and the return was great. Richard made steady progress, and gave thorough satisfaction with his work.

Late in the autumn, several houses in the neighbourhood were full of visitors, and parties on horseback frequently passed the door of the smithy. One evening as the sun was going down, red and large—with a gorgeous attendance of clouds, for the day had been wet but cleared in the afternoon—a small mounted company came along the muddy street. Almost directly in front of the workshop one of the ladies discovered her mare had lost a hind shoe.

“She couldn’t have pulled it off in a more convenient spot!” said a handsome young fellow as he dismounted. “I’ll help you down, Bab. Old Simon will have a shoe on Miss Brown in no time!”

Richard followed his grandfather to the door. A little girl, as she seemed to him, was sliding down off the back of a huge mare. She was the daintiest little thing, as lovely as she was tiny, with clear, pale, regular features under a quantity of dark brown hair. The moment she was down he saw that she was not a child. And he soon discovered that it was not her beauty, but her smiling energy and vivacity that was the most captivating thing about her. Her very soul seemed to go out to meet whatever claimed her attention. As she stood by the side of the great brown creature—huge indeed, but carrying its bulk with grace—her head reaching but halfway up the slope of its shoulder, she laid her head against it tenderly.

A new shoe had to be forged. Simon left the task to his grandson, and stood talking to the young man. He was a handsome youth, not so tall as Richard, and with more delicate features. His face was pale and wore a rather serious, self-satisfied look. He talked to the old blacksmith, however, without the slightest assumption. There were more ladies and gentlemen, but Richard, absorbed in his work, heeded none of the company.

He was not more absorbed, however, than the girl who stood beside him. She watched every point in the making of the shoe. Heedless of the flying sparks, she gazed as if she meant to make the next one herself. Her mind seemed working along with his hands—she seemed to be all the time doing the thing herself in her own mind. When he carried the half-forged iron to apply it for one tentative instant to the mare’s hoof, the girl followed him. The mare fidgeted, but her little mistress was at her head in an instant and spoke to her, in a moment making her forget what was happening in such a far-off province of her being as a hind foot. When Richard, back at the forge, again placed the shoe in the fire, to his surprise her little gloved hand alighted beside his own on the lever of the bellows, powerfully helping him to blow. Again the shoe was on the anvil, and she again stood watching—and watched until he had shaped the shoe to his intent.