What did Bridget think of all this, of the spiritual evolution of her nursling, of his identity with the vicious, shifty, idle youth whose uncanny gift of design seemed to have been completely lost after his stay in South Africa?  David Vavasour Williams had left home to the relief of his father and the whole village, if even to the half-pitying regret of his old nurse, in 1896.  He had spent a year or more in Mr. Praed’s studio studying to be an architect or a scene painter.  Then somehow or other he did not get on with Mr. Praed and he enlisted impulsively in a South African Police force (in the Army, it seemed to Bridget).  He had somehow become involved in a war with a South African people, called by Bridget “the Wild Boars”; he is wounded or ill in hospital; is little heard of, almost presumed dead.  Throughout all these five years he scarcely ever writes to his forgiving father; maintains latterly a sulky silence.  Then, suddenly in the summer of 1901, returns; preceded only by a telegram but apparently vouched for by this Mr. Praed; and announces himself as having forgotten his Welsh and most of the events of his youth, but having acquired a changed heart, and an anxiety to make up for past ill-behaviour by a present good conduct which seems almost miraculous.

Well:  miracles were easily believed in by Bridget.  Perhaps his father’s prayers had been answered.  Providence sometimes meted out an overwhelming boon to really good people.  David was certainly a Vavasour, if there was nothing Williamsy about his looks....  His mother, in Mrs. Bridget Evanwy’s private opinion, had been a hussy....  Was David his father’s son?  Hadn’t she once caught Mrs. Howel Williams kissing a young stranger behind a holly bush and wasn’t that why Bridget had really been sent away?  She had returned to take charge of the pretty, motherless little boy when she herself was a widow disappointed of children, and the child was only three.  Would she ever turn against her nursling now, above all, when he was showing himself such a son to his old father?  Not she.  He might be who and what he would.  He was giving another ten years of renewed life to the dear old Druid and the continuance of a comfortable home to his old Nannie.

They talked a great deal up at Little Bethel of a “change of heart.”  Perhaps such things really took place, though Bridget Evanwy from a shrewd appraisement of the Welsh nature doubted it.  She would like to, but couldn’t quite believe that an angel from heaven had taken possession of David’s body and come here to play a divine part; because David sometimes talked so strangely—­seemed not only to doubt the existence of a heavenly host, but even of Something beyond, so awful in Bridget’s mind that she hardly liked to define it in words, though in her own Welsh tongue it was so earthily styled “the Big Man.”

However, at all costs, she would stand by David ... and without quite knowing why, she decided that on all future visits she herself would “do out” his room, would attend to him exclusively.  The “girl” was a chatterer, albeit she looked upon Mr. David with eyes of awe and a most respectful admiration, while David on his part scarcely bestowed on her a glance.