Ted, looking through the inn window as they waited for tea, saw it, and the problem as to why it had been built so far away from the village, a problem which Morris Pugh had evaded, recurred to him.
"I should say, because the site--belonged to some one," said Ned coolly. "These things will happen--even to Boards. They are part of our commercial standard--caveat emptor! And in this case, the purchaser being the public--well, we don't think of the public as our neighbour. No! the public is an ill dog in temperance Wales!--especially amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. The parson, though, is a good sort--he didn't fancy the subject!"
"Not as he fancied the Welsh motto over the door," laughed Ted. "By George! how he let out about foreign languages and Wales being a conquered country. I had to drop reason and the Norman invasion, or there'd have been a row. He was awfully like Ffluellen--what a genius Shakespeare was."
"Yes! He understood, and you don't. I tell you, Wales is the most Rip-van-winkleish place in the world. You can go to sleep in a fifteenth-century farm and wake up the day after to-morrow in an Intermediate School. I've been in India, and it reminds me awfully of the National Congress. But I like it, though it is fatiguing to any one with a hankering after fact. Still, if there was a little more water--there is none in summer time, you know--and a little less rain, a little more right, and a trifle less righteousness it would do very well."
"Righteousness!" echoed Ted, "there's enough of that, anyhow. Two, four, six, eight, eight belfries to how many souls in the village?--four hundred all told?"
"That's only four chapels; the others are Sunday schools, I'll bet--'the Macleods must have a boat o' their ain.' Then there's the church--that ruin up yonder--it'll have a school too----"
But Ted's attention was diverted. "I say," he remarked, "that's a ripping girl!"
She had come out of a cottage a little way from the inn to intercept Morris Pugh and was engaging him in a lively conversation, despite his hurry. She was tall, dressed in black that glinted, and the fact that her hair was in curling pins did not interfere with her very voyante good looks.
"H'm!" remarked Ned, coming over to see, "reminds me of last Monday--I mean Bank Holiday! Doesn't she?"
The sarcasm was just, but it brought a faintly-annoyed flush to his companion's face. He knew himself to be a lower bred man, and the other Edward Cruttenden had a trick of reminding him of this and of certain other facts which, given fair choice, he would probably have forgotten.