"Stand back, Englishwoman!" she cried in Welsh, her eyes blazing with sudden, wild, distracted passion. "Leave us alone! We are accursed! accursed! we want no flowers here." Then she clung to her mother and wailed, "Oh! mother, take it away--take the child away--I do not want it; it is accursed. God has taken it away, and it must go. Let her take it if she wants it; take it away and bury it out of sight. I must forget my sin--my sin--my sin! Beth n'ai! Beth n'ail Gwae fi! beth n'ai!"
The mingled sobbing of the two women, roused in an instant to the very highest pitch of unrestrained emotion, smote on Aura's ears turning her to veritable stone. She understood enough to grasp the drift of what she heard, and with a quick pulse of pity for the quiet rest thus rudely disturbed, she bent and kissed the clay-cold child, then turned without a word and left the room. Not to be long alone, however.
The elder woman, recovering her self-control as quickly as she had lost it, followed her into the sunshine beyond the low door, and arrested her with mingled tears and apologies. Gwen, she said in quaintest English and Welsh, was a mad iolin--just a silly nonsense--though it was just true the child wass better to die. It was not as the 'nother one--here she looked sorrowfully at a five-year-old who was busy making mud pies by the waterspout, and shook her head--that one wass two shillin' and sixpence a week. Yess, indeed! because her daughter wass for ever in the good shentleman placiss; but Gwen--silly nonsense, Gwen--she could pay nothing. She was not all wise----
Aura, staring out into the sunshine which happed the whole beautiful world-expanse of hill and wood in its magic mantle, looked in the woman's really grief-stricken face, in slow, almost incredulous wonder.
"You mean that--that--" she hesitated, pointing to the child--"that your other daughter in service pays you half a crown?"
Something in her voice made Mrs. Evans mop her eyes with her apron still more strenuously. "It is the price," she protested; "there is many askiss three shillin'. Mrs. Jhones and she have two, an' Mrs. Daviss, an'----"
"And Gwen gave nothing!"
The words seemed to Aura to burden the sunshine; she turned swiftly to go, feeling the need of escape.
"But the ladiess," sobbed Mrs. Evans, "would be given a shillings or so when they be comning. Yess, indeed! a shillings or so."
Aura wheeled, the lilies still in her arms. "I have no money," she cried, her voice ringing with passionate scorn, "I never have any money, thank God!"