Little Nan was arranging some crockery on the white dresser. She stopped at the sound of my voice, and turned round with the large china tea-pot in her hand. When I had seen her on Saturday, seated weeping on the old cinder-heap, I had regarded her as a very little child. Now I perceived my mistake. Nan was no child; she was a miniature woman. I began to doubt what effect my copies of Punch and my sixpenny paints would produce on this odd mixture; more particularly when she said, in a quiet old-fashioned voice—“But he did go into the mine, Miss Morgan; Miles went down the shaft at five o’clock this mornin’.”
“You take it very calmly when the time comes,” I continued; “I thought you would have been in a terrible state.”
“Yes, ain’t I easy,” said Nan, “I never thought as the Lord ’ud help me like this; why, I ain’t frighted at all.”
“But there’s just as much danger as ever there was,” I said. “Your not being frightened does not make it at all safer for Miles down in the pit.”
I made this remark, knowing that it was both unkind and disagreeable; but I was disappointed; I had meant to turn comforter—I was provoked to find my services unnecessary.
“There ain’t no danger to-day,” replied Nan, to my last pleasant assurance.
“How can you say that?” I asked.
“’Cause the Lord revealed it to me in a dream.”
Now I, too, believed in dreams. I was as superstitious as the most superstitious Welsh girl could possibly be. Gwen, my isolated life, my Welsh descent, had all made me this; it was, therefore, with considerable delight, that, just when I was beginning to place Nan very low in my category of friends, I found that I could claim her for a kindred spirit.
“You are a very odd little girl,” I said; “but I’m sure I shall like you. See! I’ve brought you Punch, and the Illustrated News, and a box of paints, and perhaps I shall show you how to colour these pictures, as the children did at Tynycymmer.”