‘What’s up now?’ said her husband. ‘You can’t expect to keep your girls with you for ever, you know, Mary; and William Owen is as good a lad as ever stepped in shoe leather, and will keep our Hetty well. We might have gone further and fared worse for a husband for her.’ ‘Oh, yes, I know that, father, and I’m quite satisfied. I like Will myself. He’s like a son to me. No, I wasn’t thinking of Hetty at all, but of our Nell. I’ve been thinking of her a deal lately. I don’t seem as if I could get her out of my mind. It seems so hard that Hetty should see her and not I. Five years is a long time not to set eyes on one’s own child. Sometimes the longing for a sight of her is so bad, I feel as if I must go up to London, if I walk every step of the way.’ ‘Oh, that’s the way the crow flies,’ chuckled the farmer. ‘You’re jealous of your daughter, are you? You’ll be worrying me to take you a second honeymoon tour next. _You_ want to see London town, now.’ ‘Oh, Grif, how I wish I could, not for the sake of the sights, you know. The only sight I want is that of my girl. If I had ever thought that servants were such slaves up there, I’d have cut her legs off before she should have left Usk. My pretty Nell! If she goes and marries away from me, where, perhaps, I may never have a glimpse of her, or her little ones, it would drive me crazy.’ ‘Come now, mistress!’ exclaimed the farmer in his old-fashioned way, ‘you must just put off your fit of the mopes for a bit, for here are all your guests coming down the dell in their wedding bravery. Here’s Hetty, blooming like a rose, and trying to look as if nobody had ever been married in the world before her. How are you, my little bride, and how are you, William, my lad? Mind the step, Mrs Owen, ma’am, for it’s broken at the edge. (You mind me to have that set right, Mary!) Well, farmer, you look famous, and so does Hugh here. I went to hear you spouting last Sunday night, lad, and you have the gift of the gab and no mistake. You made my wife, here, cry. You hit so neatly on her favourite sins.’ ‘Oh, no, Hugh, you won’t believe that, I hope,’ cried Mrs Llewellyn, blushing like one of her daughters. ‘Father’s only chaffing you. It was looking at you and thinking of my Nell that made me cry. The sight of you brings back the time so plain, when you and she used to play and quarrel all day long. You were main sweet on her then, and used to call her your little wife. Ay, but how glad I should be if she had stayed at home like my Hetty and married in Usk. My heart is very sore sometimes, when I think of her so far away and I not near her, in sickness or trouble. Sometimes I fancy I’ll never set eyes on her again.’ ‘Oh, mother, you mustn’t say that,’ interposed Hetty, ‘for Nell promised Will and me that as soon as ever she got a holiday she should come back to see us all at Usk. But Lord Ilfracombe has gone abroad and left her in charge of everything, so she can’t possibly leave the house just yet.’