'So I hear you're a widow, Mrs. Edwards,' was his abrupt salutation. 'The farmer could not see his way home, I'm told, and so got drowned. Blind drunk, I suppose?' A supercilious lift of his narrow shoulders emphasised his brutal comment.
Rhys flamed up. 'No, sir; my father never got drunk. He could not see for the mist, and the flood carried him away. If he had been drunk, sir, he could not have crossed the Rhonda ford.'
If Mrs. Edwards had been shocked by the steward's unfeeling rudeness, now she feared her farm was in peril, and began to wish she had left Rhys outside.
With half-shut eyes, Mr. Pryse scanned the impetuous boy from head to foot curiously. Ignoring the warm defence of a dead father, he drew his sinister brows together, and asked curtly—
'That your son?'
''Deed, yes, sir.'
'How old is he?'
'Twelve last March, sir.'
An unpleasant smile thinned the thin lips that asked again—
'Your eldest?'