‘Oh, yes, I know that, father, and I’m quite satisfied. I like Will myself. He’s like a son to me. No, I wasn’t thinking of Hetty at all, but of our Nell. I’ve been thinking of her a deal lately. I don’t seem as if I could get her out of my mind. It seems so hard that Hetty should see her and not I. Five years is a long time not to set eyes on one’s own child. Sometimes the longing for a sight of her is so bad, I feel as if I must go up to London, if I walk every step of the way.’
‘Oh, that’s the way the crow flies,’ chuckled the farmer. ‘You’re jealous of your daughter, are you? You’ll be worrying me to take you a second honeymoon tour next. You want to see London town, now.’
‘Oh, Grif, how I wish I could, not for the sake of the sights, you know. The only sight I want is that of my girl. If I had ever thought that servants were such slaves up there, I’d have cut her legs off before she should have left Usk. My pretty Nell! If she goes and marries away from me, where, perhaps, I may never have a glimpse of her, or her little ones, it would drive me crazy.’
‘Come now, mistress!’ exclaimed the farmer in his old-fashioned way, ‘you must just put off your fit of the mopes for a bit, for here are all your guests coming down the dell in their wedding bravery. Here’s Hetty, blooming like a rose, and trying to look as if nobody had ever been married in the world before her. How are you, my little bride, and how are you, William, my lad? Mind the step, Mrs Owen, ma’am, for it’s broken at the edge. (You mind me to have that set right, Mary!) Well, farmer, you look famous, and so does Hugh here. I went to hear you spouting last Sunday night, lad, and you have the gift of the gab and no mistake. You made my wife, here, cry. You hit so neatly on her favourite sins.’
‘Oh, no, Hugh, you won’t believe that, I hope,’ cried Mrs Llewellyn, blushing like one of her daughters. ‘Father’s only chaffing you. It was looking at you and thinking of my Nell that made me cry. The sight of you brings back the time so plain, when you and she used to play and quarrel all day long. You were main sweet on her then, and used to call her your little wife. Ay, but how glad I should be if she had stayed at home like my Hetty and married in Usk. My heart is very sore sometimes, when I think of her so far away and I not near her, in sickness or trouble. Sometimes I fancy I’ll never set eyes on her again.’
‘Oh, mother, you mustn’t say that,’ interposed Hetty, ‘for Nell promised Will and me that as soon as ever she got a holiday she should come back to see us all at Usk. But Lord Ilfracombe has gone abroad and left her in charge of everything, so she can’t possibly leave the house just yet.’
‘In charge of everything? Doesn’t that seem strange?’ said the mother, with a proud smile, ‘My careless Nell! Lord Ilfracombe must think a deal of her to trust her like that.’
‘Oh, he does think a deal of her, mother. Anyone could see that. He must give her heaps and heaps of money. You should have seen how she was dressed. Oh, lovely! And her hair was done just like a lady’s, and when we had tea with her, the footman waited on us as if we had been the owners of the house, and he brought the tea up on a beautiful silver tray and we sat in the best room, and it was like failyland, wasn’t it, Will?’
‘I hope Nell did not do anything she ought not,’ remarked the prudent mother. ‘I hope she won’t get into a scrape for this.’
‘Just what I said,’ laughed Hetty; ‘but Nell said Lord Ilfracombe is so good-natured that if he came back, sudden-like, he’d only smile and say,—“That’s right, go on and enjoy yourselves.” And a gentleman who came and spoke to us when we were at the play, and sent us the most beautiful ices, talked as if Lord Ilfracombe thought all the world of our Nell; didn’t he, Will?’