Nance thought and repeated some verses.
“No, I can’t,” he said, shaking his head, “I can’t. They’re sad, an’ I’ve always been merrylike.”
In the silence that followed these words Silvan turned to Nance.
“I might, if ’twould please ye, say these words.” Silvan repeated a verse. “But I cannot promise even these.”
As she listened Nance’s face fell.
“Aye, well, dad darlin’,” she said, as bravely as she could, “they’re good words indeed, over-cheerful, I’m thinkin’, but Holy Writ, aye, Holy Writ.”
Whatever happened in the luxuriant green of the Rhyd Ddu valley, which the bees still preferred to Paradise, and the flowers to the Garden of Eden itself,—whatever happened in this valley—some phenomenal spring season, the flood that swept away their plots of mid-summer marigolds, the little life that suddenly began to make its needs felt, or the life with its last need answered—was adjudged with the most primitive wisdom and philosophy.
Megan Griffiths lost no time in distributing the gleanings from her visit with Nance, information which was often redistributed and to which new interest accrued daily as the end of Silvan Rhys’s life drew near.
“Tut,” said Megan, “she’s that ambitious for him, it fairly eats her up. ’Twas always so from the day of their biddin’, an’ here ’tis comin’ his funeral, an’ he’ll never end with a word of Holy Writ on his lips, that he won’t.”
“There, there!” Dolly Owen objected, compassionately, her motherly face full of rebuke.