And soon he was blowing steadily; for the lad’s frame was a giant’s, when he chose to use it, and no fatigue had ever greatly touched him. From time to time, as the blacksmith paused to take a red-hot bar from the furnace or to put a cold one in, he would nod cheerfully at Billy the Fool and emphasize the frolicsome side of his employment. “Ye’ve an easy time, Billy,” he would say. “See me sweating here at beating iron into horseshoe shape--and ye playing at chasing sparks all up the chimley!” The sweat was pouring from Billy, too, by this time, but he did not heed. Plump and soft his laugh came, as he forced the sparks more swiftly from the coals. “Was born for playtimes, I, David,” he cried in great delight. “I’ve heard tell of silver spoons, popped unbeknownst-like into babbies’ cradles. _I_ war a babby o’ that make, I reckon, for sure ’tis I’m always playing, when I’m not always idling in between times.” “Ye were lucky fro’ birth,” David answered, driving the hole for the last nail. “Some folk is, while other-some must work.” “Why _do_ ye work, David?” asked the other, with entire simplicity. “Oh, just a fancy, lad. Seems as I have to, somehow. There were no silver spoons dropped into _my_ cradle. Hive o’ bees swarmed there, I fancy, for I’ve had a few in my bonnet ever since.” There was another silence, while Billy the Fool, working hard at the bellows, looked long and meditatively at David Blake. “I wouldn’t like to hurt ye, David,” he said at last, “but I reckon ye’re just a bit daft-witted like. Why don’t ye play or idle all your time, same as I do?” David threw the finished horseshoe on the heap at his left hand, and was about to answer when a shadow came between the reeking smithy and the fresh and open sunshine beyond the door. “Oh, ’tis ye, Priscilla?” he said, looking up. “Ye’ve got the spring-look in your face.” As she stood half in, half out of the smithy door, Priscilla was radiant in her young and pliant beauty. To David Blake’s fancy--rough, kindly, not far wide of the mark at any time--she “made the day new-washed and happier”; yet it was Billy who next found his tongue. “Te-he! Ye look as if life was playtime for ye, too,” said he, still blowing at his bellows, but looking at her slily over his shoulder. “Maybe,” she laughed--and the kind, wise music of the thrush was in her laughter. “’Tis very true, Billy. Life’s playtime for me.” David Blake looked at her, and liked her a little the better; for he knew that Priscilla worked hard, worked long and with a blithe face, each day of her life. To the blacksmith it seemed, in between doing odd jobs that brought him in a livelihood, that his prime work in life was to love Priscilla ever and ever a little more--and each day to find himself more tongue-tied in her presence. Again it was Billy who took up the talk, though Blake would think to-morrow of twenty things he might have said, and curse himself in a quiet way for having failed to say them.