“You’re right, my boy—­Ah! your memory can’t be as bad as you pretend.  Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the window.”

“The deuce he did!” said David.  “Well, I shan’t complain of anything.”

His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special prominence to the shaving tackle.  He had just finished a summary toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an exclamation of impatience—­for he dearly wanted time and solitude for collected thought—­he admitted Bridget.

“Well, Nannie,” he said, “come for a gossip?”

“Yess.  I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you’ve changed, you have changed.  And yet, I don’t know?  You don’t look much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an architect.  Your cheek—­” (lifting her hand and stroking it, while David tried hard not to wince) “Your cheek’s as soft and smooth as it was then, as any young girl’s.  Wherever you’ve been, the world has not treated you very bad.  No one would have dreamt you’d been all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars.  But some men wear wonderful well.  I suppose your father giv’ you a bit of a shock?  He’s much older looking; and he wassn’t suffering, to speak of, from his sight when you went away.  And now he can hardly see to read even with his new spectol.  Old Doctor Murgatroyd can’t do nothing for him—­Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor.  But after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying to get his sight back.  He’d sit for hours doing nothing but think and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times.  Of course he knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the Lessons....  But you see, he’d often only have me and the girl and Tom in church.  There’s a new preacher up at Little Bethel that’s drawn all the village folk to hear him.  But your father’ll be a different man now—­you see, he’ll be like a boy again.  And if you could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol—­or Clifton I think it wass—­to see if they could do anything about his eyes....

“The past’s the past and we aren’t going to say no more about it, and now you’ve turned over a new leaf—­somehow I can’t feel you’re the same person—­don’t go worrying yourself about that slut Jenny. She’s all right.  After your baby was born at her mother’s, she went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who’s at work on the new coal mine in Gower.  He wasn’t a bad sort of chap and when he’d heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he’d marry her and take over her baby.  So your father paid the twenty pounds, and if she’ll only keep straight she’ll be none the worse for what’s happened.  I always said it wass my fault.  It wass the year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had