This afternoon both my prognostications were fulfilled.
The rain did leave off, and the valley in which this house is set became a green and smiling paradise, scented with the fragrance of wet pine trees, and of sweet peas and honeysuckle, and suddenly pregnant with that other flavour which is new to me—part scent, part sight, part sound. "The flavour of Wales"—some quality quite indescribable; some wild native atmosphere richer, sadder, sweeter, more "original" than any that I had breathed in those flat, smiling garden plots that are described as "rural England."
No wonder I've always heard that Welsh people who have left their country suffer at times from such poignant longings, such "hiræth" or home-sickness as is unknown to the colonising, conquering Saxon!
Even Miss Million and Miss Vi Vassity are more inclined to approve of the scenery now! And this afternoon "the neighbourhood" called on the new tenant of this place.
"The neighbourhood" seems to comprise any other house within an afternoon's walk, or even motor-drive.
I heard the car drive up, from my attic bedroom, and I flew down to the front door. For cook was baking, and both of what she calls "them girls" had taken their departure. It was the legitimate afternoon out of Maggie-Mary, the first housemaid. And Blodwen, the other, had asked special permission to attend a funeral in the next valley.
I had said I would be housemaid in her place, so she had sallied forth, all new black and gratified grins.
I found myself opening the door to three heterogeneous parties of people at once, and ushering them into the faded, pretty, pot-pourri-scented drawing-room. It was empty. My mistress and her guests had suddenly fled!
They—Miss Million, Vi Vassity, and Mrs. Flukes—had betaken themselves into the bedroom that has been given over to the baby's nursery, and were sitting over the fire there gossiping with the young, mauve-clad monthly nurse.
"Must I go down? Oh, what a nuisance; now I'll have to change," began my mistress, but I was firm.