Lord, but Will couldn't remember ever being so fresh-faced, so earnest. He couldn't even remember when he'd learned to work wood, whether it'd been baked into his bones from the start like Arthur's tanner's trade and Much's family mill or whether he'd found it for himself somewhere along the winding road. Something he'd picked up to make himself useful, or to earn a little coin, or in hopes of building something for his own beyond the greenwood. He knew that look, though, the eager eyes and the sturdy resolve. Seen it on plenty young apprentices down the years. Plenty new Sherwood recruits, too, come to that.
He cracked a small smile. "Well, since we're levellin', 'sonly fair I tell you it's been a while since I had an apprentice. I was out of the trade for a fair spell. Been set up in this place over a year, but it's only these last five months odd I been getting some real business in." Real business being building furniture for people who weren't his mates. (They were mates of mates now, and god bless Tuck, who'd been singing his praises to anybody who so much as glanced at the church pews or the parsonage coffee table. He'd just got another commission for pews for a congregation in Queens.)
As he spoke, he added a teaspoon of sugar to Lyra's coffee and set both mugs down on the kitchen-table-cum-desk, before returning to the cupboard above the sink to dig out an already-open box of ginger snaps. "Business enough I can pay you fair, that ain't no issue," he added, just in case that gave her the wrong idea. "Just to say, I reckon if we both listen to each other, we'll do alright. What d'you think?"