Then the plotting David fell asleep at last and woke to hear the loud tapping on his door at eight o’clock, of Bridget, rather surprised to find the door locked, but entering (when he had garbed himself in his Norfolk jacket and opened the door), with hot water for shaving and a cup of tea.

It was a hot July morning, and while he dressed, the southern breeze came in through the open window scented by the roses and the lemon verbena growing against the wall.  His father was pacing up and down the hall and the verandah restlessly awaiting him, fearing lest the whole episode of the day before might not have been one of his waking dreams.  His failing sight made reading almost a torture and writing more a matter of feeling than visual perception.  Time therefore hung wearisomely on his hands; Bridget was not a good reader, besides being too busy a housekeeper to have time for it.  Had David really returned to him?  Would he sometimes read aloud and sometimes write his letters, or even the finish of his History?  Too good to be true!

But there was David coming down the stairs, greeting him with tender affection.  “Read and write for you, father?  Of course!  But before I go back to London—­and unfortunately I must go back early in August—­I’m going to take you to see an oculist—­Bristol or Clifton perhaps—­and get your sight restored.”

After breakfast, however, the father decided he must take David round the village, to see and be seen.  David was not very anxious to go, but as the Revd.  Howel looked disappointed he gave in.

It had to be got over some time or other.  So they first visited the church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing battlemented tower.  Here David asked to inspect the registers and found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)—­the record of his father’s marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was twenty-three and the Revd.  Howel forty at the time) and of his own baptism two years afterwards.

Then issuing from the church, father and son walked through the village, the father pointing out the changes for better or worse that had taken place in four years, and not noticing the vagueness of his son’s memories of either persons or features in the landscape.  The village, like most Welsh villages, was of white-washed cottages, slate-roofed, but it was embowered with that luxuriance of foliage and flowers which makes Glamorganshire—­out of sight of the coal-mining—­seem an earthly paradise.  Every now and then the Revd.  Howel would nudge his son and say:  “That man who spoke was old Goronwy, as big a scoundrel now as he was five years ago,” or he would introduce David to a villager of whom he thought more favourably.  If she were a young woman she generally smirked and looked sideways; if a man he grunted out a Welsh greeting or only gave a nod of surly recognition.  Several professed fluent recognition but some said in Welsh “he wasn’t a bit like the Mr. David they had known.”  Whereupon the Revd.  Howel laughed and said:  “Wait till you have been out to South Africa fighting for your king and country and see if that doesn’t change you!”