to the wet on his face and chest. He took a handful of hay out of the bale they kept by the door for the occasional bribery of their reluctant equine customers and rubbed it over his face and chest. It was not very absorbent, but he enjoyed its fresh smell. He became aware of a tiny gasp from the doorway and looked up. There was a young woman looking at him. At least he assumed she was, but as the light was behind her all he could see was a slim curvy outline, the shape of a hat, and a glow of gold under it where the sun was shining through her hair. He whirled around, reaching for his shirt.
“Ach, no, do not bother. I….” She broke off in confusion. Lewis shrugged into his shirt, pulling it closed across his chest and moving into the doorway so that he could see her better. Her face was pink, but her eyes still strayed to Lewis’ chest, where he could see bits of hay were sticking to him. He picked off some of the bigger pieces and dropped them on the ground. The young woman watched them fall, and it seemed for a moment that she would pluck them out of the air, but then she was reaching into her bag and pulling out a buckle, which she held towards him with a trembling hand.
“Can you mend this? The tongue has broken.”
Lewis took the buckle and turned it over in his hands. It was big and heavy.
“This is not yours, I think? It is too big for a pretty girl.” He stopped, astonished at himself for being so forward and very slowly raised his eyes to look at her. Then his world stopped and his heart flipped over, settling down eventually to beat forever in a totally different way, even in a different place. Unable to think clearly about anything, he stared at her smile. It seemed to light up the forge, light up the street, light up the…
“Yes, yes,” said Trynor, “the smile always gets you, doesn’t it? Just as you get the result by having flowers on your chest. Not quite flowers this time, but grass seems to have done the trick. Too good a signal to drop. We’ll use it again, I suspect.”
“Take the young lady into the office, Lewis; and take her order properly,” said the master smith, “while I try to get it through this thick young skull here how to keep a fire hot.”
Lewis did up his shirt buttons with shaking hands and led the young woman through into the little room so grandly called the office. He offered her a seat, then took her details into the big leather bound ledger. Aware of her eyes on him, he tried not to let his tongue creep out from between his teeth as he concentrated on making the pen do his bidding. He formed the letters as well as he could, to suit the importance of the occasion. He had noticed her before, in the town, but did not know her name.
“Dorothy Milne? Then are you maybe related to my cousin, Neil Martin?”
“Yes, he is my cousin, too!” They laughed and fell into a discussion about their families, how they shared a cousin and yet were not related. And eventually they found themselves agreeing to go to the Martin family’s harvest ceilidh the next week.
And we did, thought Lewis, as he glanced again at the clock, and we danced as though no one else mattered and were noticed by everyone, including the minister, sour old killjoy that he is. Neil and the others had good fun laughing at my expense over that. And I got teased unmercifully when I got back into the forge that first day with the buckle in my sweaty hands. Lewis grinned as he remembered how easy it had been, getting to know Dorothy, and how he had been able to say pretty things to her that would have tied his tongue with any other woman. None of their teasing matters now, he thought, because she is my own sweet Dorothy, we have our little Dawn, I am saving a bit from my work in the foundry and I will have my own smithy one day, maybe over in Dairsie, to be nearer the family, so Dawn can play with her cousins. Of course, he thought with a happy sigh, she will have brothers and sisters of her own to play with.