The much-suffering lord of Earlsfont stretched forth his open hand, palm upward, for a testifying instrument to the plain truth of his catalogue of charges.  He closed it tight and smote the table.  ’Like mother—­and grandmother too—­like daughter!’ he said, and generalised again to preserve his dignity:  ’They’re aflame in an instant.  You may see them quiet for years, but it smoulders.  You dropped the spark, and they time the explosion.’

Caroline said to Mr. Camminy:  ‘You are sure you can give us the day?’

‘All of it,’ he replied, apologising for some show of restlessness.  ’The fact is, Miss Adister, I married a lady from over the borders, and though I have never had to complain of her yet, she may have a finale in store.  It’s true that I love wild Wales.’

‘And so do I’ Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.

‘You will pardon me, Camminy,’ said Mr. Adister.

The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so magnanimously humiliating himself.  ‘Sir!  Sir!’ he said.  ’Yes, Welsh blood is queer blood, I own.  They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive.  The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible.  They are born, it would seem, with more than the common allowance of kibes for treading on:  a severe misfortune for them.  Now for their merits:  they have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are hospitable to teach the Arab a lesson:  I do believe their life is their friend’s at need—­seriously, they would lay it down for him:  or the wherewithal, their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed harp of three generations back, worth now in current value sixpence halfpenny as a curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they’ll keep against their own desire to heap on you everything they have—­if they love you, and you at the same time have struck their imaginations.  Offend them, however, and it’s war, declared or covert.  And I must admit that their best friend can too easily offend them.  I have lost excellent clients, I have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their literature, I study their language, I attend their gatherings and subscribe the expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the Triads, and can come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise:  but it so chanced that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty.  There’s an Arabian tale, Miss Adister, of a peaceful traveller who ate a date in the desert and flung away the stone, which hit an invisible son of a genie in the eye, and the poor traveller suffered for it.  Well, you commit these mortal injuries to the invisible among the Welsh.  Some of them are hurt if you call them Welsh.  They scout it as the original Saxon title for them.  No, they are Cymry, Cambrians!  They have forgiven the Romans.  Saxon and Norman are still their enemies.  If you stir their hearts