"No-o-o!" exclaimed Mr. Tudor Williams, shocked. Perhaps also he wished to gain a little time; he had no wish to call upon Squire Wynne, either about this or anything else. "Don't tell me they did that!" he added.
"Indeed, they did," said John quickly.
"Aw-w-w!—But it is a Liberal maxim, John, and Radical, too, that force is no remedy. In my opinion our friend Dafydd here——" he put his arm affectionately about Dafydd Dafis's waist, "—was a lit-tle headstrong about burning the fences."
"I will not burn their house," said Dafydd sullenly. (By the way, had the case been altered, it is doubtful whether the Kerrs would have done as much for him.)
"Well—we can always take what the doc-tor told the man who wanted information for noth-thing to take—advice," said Mr. Tudor Williams.
"It would be better to see Mr. Wynne first," said John Pritchard. "If one comes others may come, and indeed I never saw such behaviour, no, not in a den of li-ons!"
They continued to discuss the matter, while, before their eyes, the Kerrs fitted their window-sash.
Yet it was curious to note how, within the bond of their passionate, if loquacious nationalism, each man was jealously for himself. It was not that their democracy was more conspicuously lacking in democrats than are other democracies; perhaps it was rather that the Welshman recognises two ties and two ties only—the tie of unity against the foreigner, and the private claim of his strong family affections. Between these two things is his void and vulnerable place. He has not set up for himself the Englishman's stiff and serviceable and systematised falsity of Compromise, that has no justification save that it works. He has his age-long tradition, but no daily rule that can (and indeed must) be applied without question. Each of his acts is his first act, and so a retail act. Because his hypocrisy lacks the magnificent scope of that of the Saxon, he bears the odium of a personal stealthiness. Thus, perhaps, it comes about that while too strict an adherence to the letter is the Englishman's ever-present danger, for his brother Celt the spirit slayeth. Noble dreams, petty acts; and here, if a little obscurely, may be hidden the reason why, when he seeks his fortune in London, his greatest successes are the minor successes of drapery and milk....
"Well," said Mr. Tudor Williams at last, "Wynne is a man of no ideas. He is only a pettifogging country Squire, whose views on the Land Question are ob-solete in tot-to. But if he harbours men that are a nuisance, as John Pritchard says, perhaps it would be better if I went to see him——"
Nevertheless, he had no intention whatever of doing so. The truth was that the Squire's views on the Land Question were too obsolete altogether. They were so obsolete that he had sold when (as first Edward Garden had known, and now Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., knew) he ought to have held; and it was for Mr. Tudor Williams to profit by his error if he could, rather than to call his attention to it. He was very far from being a wealthy man.