"Why, then, if it please your honour, her name be Winifred—her other name be Bevan—Miss Bevan, the school—her father be Mister Bevan of Llaneol, steward that was to our old squire of the great house, 'the Hall'—Talylynn Hall—where there's a fine lake. I warrant your honour has fished there. You Saesonig gentlemen do mostly do nothing but fish and shoot in our poor country; I beg pardon, but you look Saesoniadd, (Saxonlike,) I was thinking—fine lake, but the trout be not to compare"——
"Well," interrupted the other laughing, "your English tongue can wag as glib as your outlandish one. A sweetheart in the case there, isn't there? What the devil's she going down to the river for at this time of night, else?"
"Why, to be sure there be!" the man answered. "We all know that; poor thing, she had need find some comforter in all her troubles—her father so poor, and in debt to this strange foreigner, who's on the water coming home now, and has made proposals for her in marriage, so they do say; but it's like your honour knows more of that than I do—for be not you Mr Lewis, I beg pardon, Lewis Lewis, esquire?"
"And what do you know of this sweetheart of hers? Is he her first, think ye? I doubt that," rejoined Lewis, not noticing his enquiry——
"You may doubt what your honour pleases, but we don't—no; never man touched her hand hardly, never one her lips, before—I did have it from her mother; but as for this one she's found at last, we wish she'd a better"——
"What's the matter with him, then?"
"Oh, nothing more than that he's poor, sir—poor; and that we don't know much about the stranger"——
"What 'we' do you mean, while you talk of 'we'?"
"Lord bless ye, sir, why us all of this bankside, and this side Tivy, the great family of us, she's just like our little girl to us all; for don't she have all our young ones to give 'em learning, whether the Cardigan ladies pay for 'em or don't? And wasn't poor dear old John Bevan the man who would lend every farmer in the parish a help in money or any way, only for asking? So it is, you see, she has grown up among us. This young man, though he may be old for what I know, never seeing him in my life—you see, sir, we on this side of Tivy are like strangers to the Cardy men, t'other side—they are Cardie's, sure enow, true ones, as the Saxon foreign folk do call us all of this shire. I wouldn't trust one of 'em t'other side, no further than I could throw him. I'll tell ye a story"——