"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's your luggage? At Pontyffynon?"
"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute past and this unexpected fatherhood assumed on his account. "I haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed, soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this part of Wales). Bees, butterflies and swallows were in the air; the distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something unusual was going on, completed the impression of the blissful countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How could I have left it?"
"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I fear me Evan led you into some of your scrapes. The fault was partly mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so wrapped up in my studies—Well, well!"
David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit altered—but isn't the bed moved—to another place?"
"You're right, my boy—Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the window."
"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, I shan't complain of anything."
His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an exclamation of impatience—for he dearly wanted time and solitude for collected thought—he admitted Bridget.
"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?"
"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've changed, you have changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an architect. Your cheek—" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock? He's much older looking; and he wassn't suffering, to speak of, from his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for him—Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor. But after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a different man now—you see, he'll be like a boy again. And if you could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol—or Clifton I think it wass—to see if they could do anything about his eyes....
"The past's the past and we aren't going to say no more about it, and now you've turned over a new leaf—somehow I can't feel you're the same person—don't go worrying yourself about that slut Jenny. She's all right. After your baby was born at her mother's, she went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who's at work on the new coal mine in Gower. He wasn't a bad sort of chap and when he'd heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he'd marry her and take over her baby. So your father paid the twenty pounds, and if she'll only keep straight she'll be none the worse for what's happened. I always said it wass my fault. It wass the year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had to go to St. David's, and after all, if it hadn't 'a-been you, it 'd 'a-been young Evan. Why there's bin some girls in the village have had two and even three babies before they settled down and got married. Now we must dish up supper. I've given you lots and lots of pancakes and the cream and honey you wass always so fond of—you bad boy—" She ventured a kiss on the smooth cheek of her nursling and heavily descended the stairs.