When the sounds of the carriage-wheels had died away, Gwenda took up one of the magazines and turned over the pages listlessly. She sighed a little wearily, and fell asleep—a sleep which lasted until her uncle returned from church, and came blustering into the room.
"Well, pommy word, child, I think you have had the best of it this morning. Price the vicar didn't preach. Some Jones of Llan something, and you never heard such a rhodomontade in your life; but I went to sleep and escaped the worst of it—all about mortar, give you my word for it, Gwenda, and about not putting enough cowhair in the mortar."
"Really!" she said, yawning. "No wonder you went to sleep. Were the
Williamses there?"
"Yes, and the Griffiths of Plâsdu, and the Henry Reeses, and Captain Scott is staying with them. Well, I'm going to have a smoke." But at the door he turned round with a fresh bit of news. "Oh, what d'ye think, Gwenda? A young man stood up to read the lessons, and I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd seen him before, and I bothered my brains about it all through the sermon till I fell asleep. After service I asked Price the vicar, and who should he be but that young fellow who tackled the bull the other day? Pommy word, he's a fine-looking fellow; got his arm in a sling, though." And he went out banging the door.
Gwenda pondered with a brightening look in her face.
The young man who seized the bull! How strange! Reading the lessons! What was the meaning of that? And with his arm in a sling! It must have really required attention when he disappeared so mysteriously the other day. Handsome? Yes, he was very handsome. That broad white forehead crowned with its tawny clumps of hair! She would like to thank him once more, for he had certainly saved her life. She rang the bell, and a maid appeared.
"Lewis, can you tell me who that man was who seized the bull the other day?"
"'Twas young Owens Garthowen, miss."
"My uncle says he read the lessons in church to-day."
"Yes, I daresay indeed, miss. He's going to be a clergyman, they say.
He hurt his arm shocking the other day, miss, because he went to Dr.
Hughes on his way from here, and he is keeping it in a sling ever
since."