During a late and sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and thin, fresh cakes touched with saffron, Garton descanted on the Celts.  It was about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the discovery that there was Celtic blood about this family had excited one who believed that he was a Celt himself.  Sprawling on a horse hair chair, with a hand-made cigarette dribbling from the corner of his curly lips, he had been plunging his cold pin-points of eyes into Ashurst’s and praising the refinement of the Welsh.  To come out of Wales into England was like the change from china to earthenware!  Frank, as a d—–­d Englishman, had not of course perceived the exquisite refinement and emotional capacity of that Welsh girl!  And, delicately stirring in the dark mat of his still wet hair, he explained how exactly she illustrated the writings of the Welsh bard Morgan-ap-Something in the twelfth century.

Ashurst, full length on the horsehair sofa, and jutting far beyond its end, smoked a deeply-coloured pipe, and did not listen, thinking of the girl’s face when she brought in a relay of cakes.  It had been exactly like looking at a flower, or some other pretty sight in Nature-till, with a funny little shiver, she had lowered her glance and gone out, quiet as a mouse.

“Let’s go to the kitchen,” said Garton, “and see some more of her.”

The kitchen was a white-washed room with rafters, to which were attached smoked hams; there were flower-pots on the window-sill, and guns hanging on nails, queer mugs, china and pewter, and portraits of Queen Victoria.  A long, narrow table of plain wood was set with bowls and spoons, under a string of high-hung onions; two sheep-dogs and three cats lay here and there.  On one side of the recessed fireplace sat two small boys, idle, and good as gold; on the other sat a stout, light-eyed, red-faced youth with hair and lashes the colour of the tow he was running through the barrel of a gun; between them Mrs. Narracombe dreamily stirred some savoury-scented stew in a large pot.  Two other youths, oblique-eyed, dark-haired, rather sly-faced, like the two little boys, were talking together and lolling against the wall; and a short, elderly, clean-shaven man in corduroys, seated in the window, was conning a battered journal.  The girl Megan seemed the only active creature-drawing cider and passing with the jugs from cask to table.  Seeing them thus about to eat, Garton said: 

“Ah!  If you’ll let us, we’ll come back when supper’s over,” and without waiting for an answer they withdrew again to the parlour.  But the colour in the kitchen, the warmth, the scents, and all those faces, heightened the bleakness of their shiny room, and they resumed their seats moodily.

“Regular gipsy type, those boys.  There was only one Saxon—­the fellow cleaning the gun.  That girl is a very subtle study psychologically.”

Ashurst’s lips twitched.  Garton seemed to him an ass just then.  Subtle study!  She was a wild flower.  A creature it did you good to look at.  Study!