‘Then maybe I could be seeing Mr Prothero?’

‘I am afraid it would only lead to something unpleasant between you.’

’Oh, you needn’t be taking the trouble to be afraid, ma’am!  I am calling my Howel as good or better as your Netta.  There was a time when you might been looking higher, but now I conceit it, it will be us as do condescend.  There’s Miss Rice Rice, and the Miss Jamms’s, Plas Newydd, and Miss Lawis, Pontammon, and Miss Colonel Rees, and Miss Jones the ’Torney, and Miss Captain Thomas, and I ’ouldn’t say but Miss Gwynne, Glanyravon, do be all speaking, and talking, and walking, and dancing with my Howels!  There’s for you:  and yet he do like his cousin Netta best he do say.’

‘If you wish to see David, Mrs Griffey, I will call him,’ said timid Mrs Prothero, at her wits’ end for anything to say or do.

‘Seurely I am wishing to see him,’ said Mrs Jenkins majestically.

David had not come in from his farm, so there was nothing for it but to ask Mrs Jenkins to take off her bonnet and have some tea, to which that lady graciously consented.  When the crape shawl and black kid gloves were removed Mrs Prothero perceived a large mourning brooch, containing a gloomy picture of a tomb, set in pearls and diamonds, and surrounded by the age, death, etc., of the lamented deceased; and a handsome mourning ring, displaying a portion of iron-grey hair, also set in pearls and diamonds, and surrounded with an appropriate epithalamium.  Mrs Prothero sat ‘washing her hands in invisible soap,’ whilst she saw these ensigns of grandeur in the once mean, ill-dressed Mrs Jenkins, and heard of all that ‘her Howels’ was about to effect.

Owen came in, and with due gravity admired the mourning insignia, and examined the dates, age, etc., of the defunct Griffey.  He went so far as to venture upon a distant allusion to the future.

‘I never thought those caps so becoming before, Aunt Jenkins,’ he said, eyeing her from head to foot, and wondering that he had never previously been aware of what a good-looking woman his Welsh aunt was.

A Welsh aunt, be it understood, is your father or mother’s cousin, and Mrs Jenkins and Mr Prothero were first cousins.

’Isn’t Davies, Pennycoed, that you used to tell us was once a lover of yours, a widower?’ continued Owen.

‘Well, Owen,’ said Mrs Jenkins, not displeased, ’you are always for jokes, but I do mean never to marry again.’

‘Don’t make any rash vows; a young woman like you!’

Here Netta having dried her eyes, joined the party, and shortly after Mr Prothero’s voice was heard.

‘After tea!’ whispered Mrs Prothero to Mrs Jenkins, as she went out to meet her husband.  ’Here’s Elizabeth Jenkins, David, come over to see us, and she is going to stay to tea.  I think she wants to speak to you afterwards.’

’Very glad to see her; but Howel sha’n’t have Netta a bit the more for that.’