"There's glad I am to see you, merch fach-i, and if you have no grand friends to keep you company and no one to look after you, you have always got old Nance to love you."
"Yes, I know that, Nance, indeed. What do you think of my new frock?" said the girl, holding out her skirt to the admiring gaze of the old woman, who went into raptures of admiration.
"Oh, there's pretty. 'Tis fine and soft, but white, always white you are wearing—"
"Yes, I like white," said Valmai.
"And didn't I dress you in your first little clothes? Well I remember it."
"There's just what I wanted to ask you about, Nance; I love to hear the old story."
"After tea, then, merch i, for now I must go and fetch water from the well, and I must milk the goat."
"I will fetch the water," said Valmai; "you can go and milk."
And taking the red stone pitcher from the bench by the wall she went out, and, sheltered by the ridge of rocks behind which the cottage stood, made her way to the spring which dripped from a crack in the cliffs. While she waited for the pitcher to fill, she sang, in sheer lightness of heart, the old ballad which not only floated on the air of Abersethin and its neighbourhood, but which she had heard her mother sing in the far-off land of her childhood.
"By Berwen's banks my love has strayed
For many a day through sun and shade,"