“You’re quite a stranger, Hugh,” she says, dropping a curtsey, as if I were the parson, or Sir Watkin himself. “Yes, indeed; now Rhoda Howell’s come back to Glanwern, you’ve lost your eyes for every one else. If I wasn’t good-tempered, I’d take offence.”
Now, my lads, I was a bit in the wrong about this girl Gwen. I don’t say that she wasn’t most to blame of the two, yet conscience made me feel uncomfortable as regards the part I had played toward her. So I couldn’t be otherwise than civil, when she met me so pleasant like, instead of being out of temper, as I expected.
Says I, “Gwen, lass, mayhap I do care more for Rhoda than for most others; I’m not ashamed to own it. Anyhow, for her sake, I’m going on a long voyage.”
“What?” she cries, anxiously, her lips turning pale indeed.
So, when the girl passed the question to me, I up and told her the whole tale, and how that, in forty-eight hours, I should be afloat on the briny ocean, with the ship’s bows standing for the North Sea.
She heard me out, quite dazed like. Then she says, says she, in a very quiet, demure fashion, “You’ll come to the singing-class to-night, if it’s only to wish us all a farewell? Rhoda will be there, but she will walk with the miller; so, if you like to keep me company for the last time, you may.”
In those old days, Hugh Anwyl boasted a tenor voice. Yes, indeed. And this girl Gwen got the reputation of being a prime musician, and used to train our class. They had her all the way off to Llangollen, to perform at an Eistedfodd, as they call it in the principality, for she sang like a nightingale. Well, when she asked me to walk with her, I thought it churlish to refuse. So, like a simpleton, I said, “Yes;” and away she tripped, with an odd laugh, as if she was mighty pleased.
I did not know it at the time, nor did I hear it until long after, but Gwen’s brother David, that same afternoon, had been to see my Rhoda.
He told her that Miller Howell expected that she would have him for a husband, and had given him permission to ask her, and that Hugh Anwyl cared for too many girls to love her.
However, in the evening I called for Gwen, and we two walked together to the waterfall.