Here they bid good-bye to the Reverend Morris Pugh's good offices. He was due ere long in chapel for choir practice and prayer meeting. As he said so, the unction came into his voice which was noticeable whenever he touched on his profession. It was as if some necessity for shibboleth arose in him, as if some claim--not altogether natural--had to be considered. Indeed, he had lingered a moment to say that prayer was needful everywhere--even in the peaceful hamlet of Dinas--prayer for some outpouring of the Spirit this Whitsuntide week. There had been no special manifestation at present, but one might come any moment--the Lord's mercy being nigh to all them that feared Him; let them remember that. So, having said his word in season, he changed his manner, wished them good luck heartily, and thus left them to their own company; for the Scotch doctor, who had also proved a pleasant acquaintance, had branched off at the bridge, some half a mile up the hill from the little hollow in which Dinas hid itself modestly among the trees. But you could see where the bridge lay, because of the startling red-and-white school beside it, which looked as if it had sprung, like Diana from Jove's brain, fully armed for education out of the bare hillside. Ted, looking through the inn window as they waited for tea, saw it, and the problem as to why it had been built so far away from the village, a problem which Morris Pugh had evaded, recurred to him. "I should say, because the site--belonged to some one," said Ned coolly. "These things will happen--even to Boards. They are part of our commercial standard--_caveat emptor!_ And in this case, the purchaser being the public--well, we don't think of the public as our neighbour. No! the public is an ill dog in temperance Wales!--especially amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. The parson, though, is a good sort--he didn't fancy the subject!" "Not as he fancied the Welsh motto over the door," laughed Ted. "By George! how he let out about foreign languages and Wales being a conquered country. I had to drop reason and the Norman invasion, or there'd have been a row. He was awfully like Ffluellen--what a genius Shakespeare was." "Yes! He understood, and you don't. I tell you, Wales is the most Rip-van-winkleish place in the world. You can go to sleep in a fifteenth-century farm and wake up the day after to-morrow in an Intermediate School. I've been in India, and it reminds me awfully of the National Congress. But I like it, though it is fatiguing to any one with a hankering after fact. Still, if there was a little more water--there is none in summer time, you know--and a little less rain, a little more right, and a trifle less righteousness it would do very well." "Righteousness!" echoed Ted, "there's enough of that, anyhow. Two, four, six, eight, eight belfries to how many souls in the village?--four hundred all told?"