Chapter Eighteen.
Our Father.
But Owen did not come back that night.
We got a nurse for Gwen, who was suffering sadly from her broken leg, and mother and I sat up together by the dining-room fire.
Without saying a word to each other, but with the same thought in both our minds, we piled coals on the grate for a night watch.
Mother ordered meat and wine to be laid on the table, then she told the servants to go to bed, but she gave me no such direction; on the contrary, she came close to where I had seated myself on the sofa, and laid her head on my shoulder.
I began to kiss her, and she cried a little, just a tear or two; but tears never came easily with mother. Suddenly starting up, she looked me eagerly in the face. “Gwladys, how old are you?”
“Sixteen—nearly seventeen, mother.”
“So you are. You were born on May Day. I was so pleased, after my two big boys, to have a daughter—though you were fair-haired, and not like the true Morgans. Well, my daughter, you don’t want me to treat you like a child—do you?”