CHAPTER XVIII.
WILLIB'S TALK WITH HIS GRANDMOTHER.

NE evening in winter, when he had been

putting coals on his grannie’s fire, she told

him to take a chair beside her, as she wanted a
little talk with him. He obeyed her gladly.

“Well, Willie,” she said, “what would you like
to be?”

Willie had just been helping to shoe a horse at
the smithy, and, in fact, had driven one of the nails
—an operation perilous to the horse. Full of the
thing which had last occupied him, he answered
without a moment’s hesitation—

“T should like to be a blacksmith, grannie.”

The old lady smiled. She had seen more black
on Willie’s hands than could have come from the
coals, and judged from that and his answer that he
had just come from the smithy.

An unwise grandmother, had she wished to turn
him from the notion, would have started an objec-
tion at once—probably calling it a dirty trade, or
a dangerous trade, or a trade that the son of a pro-