Then I enter the pig hauled from Shadrach,
and the carriage of the blooms."
"I don't understand any of that," she announced.
"It probably wouldn't interest you; the pig's the iron cast at the
furnace. It's worked in the forges, and hammered into blooms and
anconies, chunks or stout bars of wrought iron. We do better than two
tons a week." The sound of a short, jarring blow rose from the Forge, it
was repeated, became a continuous part of the serene noon. "That's the
hammer now," he explained. "It goes usually all day and most nights.
We're used to it, don't hear it; but strangers complain."
"Mr. Forsythe said your father was an Ironmaster, one of the biggest in
the Province, and I suppose you'll become that too." She gazed about at
the hills, sheeted in scarlet and yellow, at the wide sunny hollow that
held Myrtle Forge. "Here," she added in a totally unexpected accent of
feeling, "it is very beautiful, very big. I thought all the world was
like St. James or Versailles. I've never been to Poland, my mother's
family came from there to Paris, but I'm told they have forests and such
things, too. This is different from Annapolis, that is only an echo of
London, but here--" she gazed far beyond him into the profound noon.
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