Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/11

 pastimes and indeed about the only ones that the circumstances of his life offered to him. To sit on a rail fence or a hitching post with a chew of tobacco in his cheek, a bit of wood in his left hand and a jack-knife in his right, and pass the time of day with all and sundry who happened by, was as much as Bill asked of life. Whether the place was his own barnyard or Jim Townsend's blacksmith shop or Peter Akers' general merchandise store in Clayton made no particular difference to Bill so long as he could sit and chew and whittle and talk. He was built long and rickety, nondescript of feature, but with a bright twinkle of humor and kindliness in his gray eyes; and his tall, narrow-chested figure was a frequent sight about the lounging places of Clayton.

The main trouble with Bill was that along with nine-tenths of the rest of humanity, he had missed his calling. He was by nature a villager, not a farmer, and the great regret of his life was that he had not been a blacksmith. He had mastered the trade through sheer love of it and had become the best of non-professional blacksmiths. He shod his own horses and the horses of all his neighbors, asking them nothing in return but the pleasure of their company while he worked. To have a little shop of his own in the village whither the farmers would come from six or seven miles around, bringing their horses and all the news and gossip of the neighborhood, that had always been Bill's unrealized dream. Chance, however, that wayward arbiter of the fates of all of us, by making Bill the son of a farmer and the husband of a woman who had inherited a farm, had spoiled a good blacksmith to make a poor farmer. It did not occur to him to repine or cry out against his lot or consider himself in any way a blighted being on this account. He merely cast a momentarily envious eye upon Jim Townsend, the blacksmith, whenever he happened to see him, and went on farming—after a fashion. He was a gentle, kindly and sociable soul, and the good will of his neighbors meant more to him than anything else on earth except his family.

His family consisted of his wife and five children. Aunt