CHAPTER XVIII.
WILLIE'S TALK WITH HIS GRANDMOTHER.
One 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-- "I 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 objection at once--probably calling it a dirty trade, or a dangerous trade, or a trade that the son of a professional man could not be allowed to follow; but Willie's grandmother knew better, and went on talking about the thing in the quietest manner.
"It's a fine trade," she said; "thorough manly work, and healthy, I believe, notwithstanding the heat.

But why would you take to it, Willie ?" Willie fell back on his principles, and thought for a minute.
"Of course, if I'm to be any good at all I must have a hand in what Hector calls the general business of the universe, grannie." "To be sure; and that, as a smith, you would have; but why should you choose to be a smith rather than anything else in the world ?" "Because--because--people can't get on without horse-shoes, and ploughs and harrows, and tires for cart-wheels, and locks, and all that.

It would help people very much if I were a smith." "I don't doubt it.