He was not more absorbed, however, than the girl who stood beside him: she watched every point in the making of it. Heedless of the flying sparks, she gazed as if she meant to make the next shoe herself. Had Richard not been too busy even to glance at her, he might have noticed, now and then, an involuntary sympathetic motion, imitatively responsive to one of his, invariably recurrent when he changed the position of the glowing iron. Her mind seemed working in company with his hands; she was all the time doing the thing herself; Richard's activity was not merely reflected, but lived in her. When he carried the half-forged iron, to apply it for one tentative instant to the mare's hoof, Barbara followed him. The mare fidgeted. But her little mistress, who, noiseless and swift as a moth, was already at her head, spoke to her, breathed in her nostril, and in a moment made her forget what was happening in such a far-off province of her being as a hind foot. When Richard, back at the forge, was placing the shoe again 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. When once again the shoe was on the anvil, there again she stood watching--and watched until he had shaped the shoe to his intent. Old Simon did not move to interfere: the hoof required no special attention. Almost every horse-hoof in a large circuit of miles was known to him--as well, he would remark, as the nail of his own thumb. When Richard took up the foot, in order to prepare it for the reception of its new armour, again the mare was fidgety; and again the lady distracted her attention, comforting and soothing her while Richard trimmed the hoof a little. “I say, my man,” cried Mr. Lestrange, “mind what you're about there with your paring! I don't want that mare lamed.--She's much too good for 'prentice hands to learn upon, Simon!” “Keep your mind easy, sir,” answered the blacksmith. “That lad's ain't 'prentice hands. He knows what he's about as well as I do myself!” “He's young!” “Younger, perhaps, than you think, sir!--but he knows his work.” It was a pretty picture--the girl peeping round under the neck of the great creature she was caressing, to see how the smith was getting on, whose back, alas! hid his hands from her. Just as he finished driving his second nail, the nervous animal gave her foot a jerk, and the point of the nail, through the hoof and projecting a little, tore his hand, so that the blood ran to the ground in a sudden rivulet. “Hey! that don't look much like proper shoeing!” cried the young man. “I hope to goodness that's not the mare!” “She's all right,” answered Richard, rearranging the animal's foot. But Simon saw the blood, and sprang to his side. “What the devil are you about, making a fool of me, Dick!” he cried. “Get out of the way.”