"One of the boatmen told me yesterday that in the Spring large masses of the vernal squill are to be found upon the hills near here. Why is this?"
Then Miss Amy again:
"There are fine examples of contorted strata on the other side of the Trwyn. Perhaps you or your sister can tell me the reason why these strata are contorted?"
And again Miss Norah:
"Who was Taliesin? When did he flourish? Tell me anything you know about him."
Dearly would June and Wy have liked to reply, in the words of Mrs. Briggs when the hotel-manager had looked at her boots, "Don't if it hurts you!" Wiggie nicknamed Miss Norah Topham "The Vernal Squill" on the spot; June, a phanerogam herself, dubbed Miss Amy "The Club Moss."
After that dinner, there was nothing for Philip Lacey to do but to live his indiscretion down.
But if this was the "Cambrian's" attitude to the "Montgomery," it was not that of the Welshmen of Llanyglo. These were now more in number, for half the staffs of the three hotels were Welsh, and others also had scented prosperity in the air. Within a few hours friendly relations had been established between the natives and the readers of Utopia. A Welshman's eyes will always sparkle at the sight of a book or other piece of the apparatus of knowledge, and the Montgomeryites, friendly souls all and ready chatters with whomsoever they met, began to drop into Howell's shop of a morning. None too reluctantly, they suffered themselves to be drawn out by Howell on the subjects of their studies, and then it was that Howell became a proud man indeed. For he produced Eesaac Oliver, home once more from Aberystwith College. Without even having the titles given to him as he came in at the door that divided the shop from the dwelling-rooms behind, Eesaac Oliver swapped them book for book. Howell's breast swelled. "Blodwen—Blodwen—come quick!" he called. Then, with his eyes sparkling like bits of mica in a pebble and his small teeth gleaming like a double row of barley, he looked fondly on the assembly and murmured, "Dear me, I did not know till to-day there wass so-o-a many books written!" One morning Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Garden came in in the very middle of one of these galas of the intellect. They were kept waiting for a minute and more. There were times when the Llanyglo Stores almost resembled a Debating Room.
It was left to the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia Lacey to restore the balance that their father's luckless dinner-party had disturbed; and right well they laboured to that end. They brought all the resources of Brighton and Paris to bear upon those two amiable but indefatigable school-teachers, the sisters Topham. They did not avoid them; on the contrary, they put their heads together and then went out in search of them. Then, when they had met them, they asked them to tell them whether it was true that the guillemot laid its blunt-ended egg in order that it should not roll off ledges, and whether the person who said that serviceable knife-handles could be made of the stems of the Great Oar Weed had been correctly informed. And when they failed to come upon their unsuspecting victims, they cathechised one another.
"As I was ascending the mountains the other day," June would suddenly break out in the Vernal Squill's raised and staccato voice, "I found myself walking upon grass. What is grass? State reasons for your answer."