Give's hold o' your hand, my son." Taffy obeyed; not very well liking to be handled thus like a prize bullock.
"Hand like a lady's.

Tidy wrist, though.

He'll do, master." So Taffy was passed, given a leathern apron, and set to his first task of keeping the forge-fire raked and the bellows going, while the hammers took up the music he was to listen to for a year to come.
This music kept the day merry; and beyond the window along the bright high-road there was usually something worth seeing-- farm-carts, jowters' carts, the doctor and his gig, pedlars and Johnny-fortnights, the miller's waggons from the valley-bottom below Joll's Farm, and on Tuesdays and Fridays the market-van going and returning.

Mendarva knew or speculated upon everybody, and with half the passers-by broke off work and gave the time of day, leaning on his hammer.

But down at the farm all was strangely quiet, in spite of the children's voices; and at night the quietness positively kept him awake, listening to the pur-r of the pigeons in their cote against the house-wall, thinking of his grandmother awake at home and harkening to the _tick-tack_ of her tall clock.