Garthowen. Allen Raine

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      CHAPTER II

      "GARTHOWEN"

      Along the slope of a bare brown hill, which turned one scarped precipitous side to the sea, and the other, more smooth and undulating, towards a fair scene of inland beauty, straggled the little hamlet of Pont-y-fro. Jos Hughes's shop was the very last house in the village, the road beyond it merging into the rushy moor, and dwindling into a stony track, down which a streamlet trickled from the peat bog above. The house had stood in the same place for two hundred years, and Jos Hughes looked as if he too had lived there for the same length of time. His quaintly cut blue cloth coat adorned with large brass buttons, his knee breeches of corduroy, and grey blue stockings, looking well in keeping with his dwelling, but very out of place behind a counter. His brown wrinkled face and ruddy cheeks were like a shrivelled apple, his shrewd inquisitive eyes peered out through a pair of large brass-rimmed spectacles, and, to judge by his expression, the view they got of the world in general was not satisfactory.

      It was a day of brilliant sunshine and intense heat, but through the open shop door the sea wind came in with refreshing coolness. Behind the counter Jos Hughes measured and weighed lazily, throwing in with his short weight a compliment, or a screw of peppermints, as the case required.

      "Who is this coming up in the dust?" he mumbled.

      "'Tis Morva of the moor," said a woman standing in the doorway and shading her eyes with her hand. "What does she want, I wonder? There's a merry lass she is!"

      "Oh! day or night, sun or snow don't matter to her," said Jos Hughes.

      At this moment the subject of their remarks entered the shop, and, sitting on a sack of maize, let her arms fall on her lap. She was quickly followed by a large black sheep dog, who bounded in and, placing his fore-paws on the counter, with tongue hanging out, looked at Jos Hughes intently.

      "Down, Tudor!" said the girl, and he sprang on a sack of peas beside her.

      The mountain wind blowing in through the open doorway touzled the little curls that were so unruly in Morva's hair; it was neither gold nor ebony, but, looking at its rich tints, one was irresistibly reminded of the ripe corn in harvest fields, while the blue eyes were like the corn flowers in their vivid colouring.

      "How are they at Garthowen?" asked Fani "bakkare."

      "Oh! they are all well there," answered the girl, panting and fanning herself with her sun-bonnet, "except the white calf, and he is better."

      "There's hot it is!" said Fani, taking up her basket of groceries.

      "Oh! 'tis hot!" said the girl, "but there's a lovely wind from the sea."

      "What are you wanting to-day, Morva?" said Jos.

      "A ball of red worsted for Ann, and an ounce of 'bacco for 'n'wncwl Ebben, and oh! a ha'porth of sweets for Tudor."

      The dog wagged his tail approvingly as Jos reached down from the shelf a bottle of pink lollipops, for, though a wild country dog, he had depraved tastes in the matter of sweets.

      "There's serious you all look! what's the matter with you?" said the girl, looking smilingly round.

      "Nothing is the matter as I know," said Fani, "only there's always plenty of trouble flying about. We can't be all so free from care as you, always laughing or singing or something."

      "Indeed I wish we could," said Madlen, a pale girl who was bending over a box of knitting pins, looking round curiously and rather sadly; "I wish the whole world could be like you, Morva."

      Morva snatched the girl's listless hand in her own warm firm grasp, and pressed it sympathetically, for she knew Madlen's secret sorrow.

      "Wait another year or two," said Fani, "we'll talk to you then! Wait till your husband comes home drunk from 'The Black Horse!'"

      "And wait till you put all your money into a shop and then find it doesn't pay you," said Jos.

      Madlen said nothing, but Morva knew that in her heart she was thinking, "Wait until your lover proves false to you!" and she gave her hand another squeeze.

      "Well, indeed!" she said springing up, "what are you all talking about? I won't put all my money in a shop, and I won't marry a drunkard! Sixpence, is it? I am going home over the bog and round the hill, but I am going to sit on the bench outside a bit first. There's lots of swallows' nests under your eaves, Jos Hughes; that brings good luck, they say, so your shop ought to pay you well."

      So saying she passed out, and sitting on the bench round the corner of the house she kissed her hand toward the swallows, who flitted in and out of their nests, twittering ecstatically.

"Hark to her," said Fani, "singing again, if you please—always light-hearted! always happy! I don't think its quite right, Jos bâch, do you? You are a deacon at Penmorien and you ought to know. If it was a hymn now! but you hear it's all nonsense about the swallows. Ach y fi! she is learning them from Sara ''spridion';[1] some song of the 'old fathers' in past times!"

      "Yes," said Jos, sanctimoniously clasping his stubby fingers, "I'm afraid the girl is a bit of a heathen. What wonder is it? Nursed by Sara—always out with the cows or the sheep, and they say she thinks nothing of sleeping under a hedge, or out on the slopes, if any animal is sick and wants watching."

      Fani went out with a toss of her head, as the sweet voice came in through the little side window with the twittering of the swallows and the cluck, cluck of a happy brood hen.

      Outside, Morva had forgotten all about Jos Hughes and Fani "bakkare's" sour looks, and was singing her heart out to the sunshine.

      "Sing on, little swallows," she said, "and I'll sing too. Sara taught me the 'bird song' long ago when I was a baby."

      And in a clear, sweet voice she joined the birds, and woke the echoes from the brown cliffs. The tune was quaint and rapid; both it and the words had come down to her with the old folklore of generations passed away.

       "Over the sea from the end of the wide world

       I've come without wetting my feet, my feet, my feet,

       Back to the old home, straight to the nest-home,

       Under the brown thatch, oh sweet! oh sweet! oh sweet!

       "When over the waters I flew in the autumn,

       Then there was plenty of seed, of seed, of seed.

       Women have winnow'd it, threshers СКАЧАТЬ