After blundering through marshy and boggy hillocks for miles, I found
myself at last in the locality indicated to me. Arriving at a
roadside public-house, I entered it, and on inquiry was vexed to find
that I had again been misdirected. I slept there, and in the morning
started again on my quest. I was now a long way off my destination,
but had at least the satisfaction of knowing that I was on the right
road at last. In the afternoon I reached another wayside inn, very
similar to that in which I had slept. I walked up at once to the
landlord (a fat little Englishman who looked like a Welshman, with
black eyes and a head of hair like a black door-mat), and asked him
if he had known Mrs. Davies. He said he had, but seemed anxious to
assure me that he was a Chester man and 'not a Taffy.' She had died,
he told me, not long since. But he had known more of her niece,
Winifred Wynne (or, as most people called her, Winifred Davies); for,
said he, 'she was a queer kind of outdoor creature that everybody
knew.--as fond of the rain and mist as sensible folk are fond of
sunshine.'
'Where did she live?' I inquired.
'You must have passed the very door,' said the man. And then he
indicated a pretty little cottage by the roadside which I had passed,
not far from the lake. Mrs. Davies (he told me) had lived there with
her niece till the aunt died.
'Then you knew Winifred Wynne?' I said. There was to me a romantic
kind of interest about a man who had seen Winifred in Wales.
'Knew her well,' said he. 'She was a Carnarvon gal--tremenjus fond o'
the sea--and a rare pretty gal she was.'
'Pretty gal she _is_, you might ha' said, Mr. Blyth,' a woman's voice
exclaimed from the settle beneath the window. 'She's about in these
parts at this very moment, though Jim Burton there says it's her
ghose. But do ghoses eat and drink? that's what _I_ want to know.
Besides, if anybody's like to know the difference between Winnie
Wynne and Winnie Wynne's ghose, I should say it's most likely me.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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