Yes; it had taken three reigns to bring these things together; details that dragged the generations behind them as they settled down, heavily, into a permanent, complete and dominant whole, which it would now take an earthquake or a revolution to shift.
But Olwen, as it happened, felt no desire to "turn up her nose." She was enjoying this return to the days of old. It was a rest and a refreshment to her after all her war-time gipsying, after her eating in Soho restaurants, after her coming and going, after that whole life of the bird on the twig. For there is no place like home, the old, established, sturdy, stolid British home ... when one knows that one is only there on ten days' leave.
Then there were the home-dwellers. Olwen had never before realized how pretty and amusing were her young sisters Peggy and Myfanwy; especially Peggy, in her V.A.D. kit! She had wrested three days' leave from her hospital in the town in order to be with her sister from London; and there were also gathered together on a visit in the old home a selection of cousins—Howel-Joneses, Pritchards, and little Llewella Price—to welcome the wanderer home. Never before had they "made such a fuss of her," or she of them.
Even Auntie Margaret (who was THE Miss Howel-Jones, the head of the household, and a despotic version of the Professor in petticoats), even Auntie Margaret did not seem nearly as "trying" to Olwen as in those pre-War days when the present Honeycomb war-worker was a girl at home.
Why, Olwen had been in the house for two whole days, and Auntie had only been really exasperating once! And even then she had almost immediately afterwards bestowed upon Olwen an exquisite old coral brooch and a bristly kiss. After all, there were no people like one's home-people ... once one wasn't obliged always to live with them.
Yes; Olwen enjoyed them. She enjoyed the accent of the young creature who brought up hot water to her old bedroom (and who was described by Auntie as "no servant, but a colt off the mountains!"). And she enjoyed the forgotten ambrosia of the Welsh butter, and the family tea to which they all sat down about the family table, and the family jokes—all as old as her beloved hills.
There was no news, except of a bazaar in aid of comforts for the town's recruits; that had happened a month since, but it seemed still as important to the family as anything that Olwen could tell them of what had been happening in London. It was only on the Sunday when this function had been described to the last detail by each relation in turn that they left it at last to enquire about what raid; had Olwen seen anything of this?
The question was put to her at tea-time.
Olwen, munching Auntie's hot cakes, told them of the interrupted party and of her delayed journey home.
"In one of those wretchedly draughty trains! I wonder you didn't take your death," was her aunt's aghast comment.