"For instance," the Squire continued, "I've a couple of mortgages foreclosing any time now—Sheard will tell you—I don't even know who the mortgagees are. But if they're Welsh, so much the better for them. I mean if they introduce changes, or go at things like a bull at a gate, they'll wish I'd gone on paying them interest. A smile does more than a smack here. If they inclose, for example——"
"Ah, this new Act——"
"Or any other Act There was a case at that No Man's Land of mine over there——" The Squire jerked his head in the direction of the shafts where the family fortunes had been sunk. "An Englishman came, and began to fence, and there was a Dafydd Dafis sort of fellow there, and this man Rodgers thought that because he wore strings round the knees of his corduroys he wasn't anybody of consequence ... and there you are. The only thing Edward the First could do with the bards was to destroy them, and they're the same breed yet.—So that's my advice. For the rest, you'd better see Sheard. Have another glass of port."
And, after he had been shown the magnificent ruin of a staircase, and had noted without showing the grass on the Squire's paths and the moss in the Squire's grass, Edward Garden thanked the Squire for his advice and took his leave. He was able to come to terms with Sheard, and in the following spring a new house began to go up in Llanyglo.
The site Edward Garden had selected for his house lay a little way behind the row of cottages, over the thatches of which it looked out to the sea. Rock cropped up there, amid a waste of bents and potentilla and sea-thrift and thyme, and a rill slipped over moss and, a little further on, disappeared into the sand, to emerge again down by the shore. From a stone quarry on the Porth Neigr road stone was still being got for the extension of Porth Neigr itself; and it would actually be nearer to bring it to Llanyglo. Sheard saw to that also, and Edward Garden, taking the Squire's advice, put Dafydd Dafis, match-boarder, in charge of the work. It would take time, but it would save time. And, so long as it was understood that it was Dafydd Dafis who might say to this man "Come," and he came, and to the other "Go," and he went, Edward Garden did not anticipate difficulties did he wish, later, to "stiffen" his supply of labour by importing a plumber, or a mason, or a carpenter or two from Manchester.
So, in the spring, the rock was cleared and chisels began to clink; and John Willie Garden, away at school in Pannal, could scarce contain himself until the summer holidays should come. He sent, by letter, the most peremptory specifications. His room was to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. The letters also contained complaints to his mother that his health was seriously impaired by arduous study; so was the health of his friend Percy Briggs: indeed, all the fellows were remarking how greatly in need of a change of air he and Percy seemed. Mrs. Garden's chief preoccupation was that the new house should have water upstairs and a cupboard at every turn.
And as that was the first building of their own that the folk of Llanyglo had ever seen, its progress became their daily talk. The farmers came from inland to look at it, and, as the weather grew milder, the fishermen no longer smoked of an evening under the shelter of their boats down by the jetty, but instead made a kind of club-house of the triangular pile of floor-boards that the Porth Neigr timber merchant presently delivered. They climbed inside this slatted prism, hung the interstices with sacking as a protection from the wind, and smoked and talked, while the stars peeped down on them. They talked of progress and innovation, and of how little they had ever thought they would live to see such a change as this on the face of their sandhills.
"But it will not be as big as the Plas, whatever," one of them would remark, not so much as belittling Edward Garden's new house as in order to correct a certain tendency to wild and disproportionate talk. Indeed, they were proud of Llanyglo's growth. Only the building of another chapel could have made them prouder.
"Aw-w-w, William Morgan, h-what a way to talk!" another would reply. "You talk like a great simpleton! You say next it is not so big as the railway station at Porth Neigr! Indeed, the Plas is big-ger, but it is di-lap-i-date, a pit-ty to see, and the staircase—aw-w-w dear! They do say Squire Wynne he go in lit-tle bedroom, not to fall through the floor!"
"And the stables is lock up, all but one stall, and you shan't find a handful of corn there, no, not more than will feed one horse!"