The orders he had given for the preparation of the double cottage for his wife and children had included the lining of the interior with match-boarding, and he had understood that this had been finished a week and more ago. It was a month since he had had the advice-note from the timber merchant at Porth Neigr that the material had been delivered. And so it had. There it was. There, too, were the walls. But the matchboarding was not on the walls. It lay, tongued and grooved, with the scantling for fixing it, just where the timber merchant's men had deposited it--on the floor. It filled half the place. On the top of it, still in the sacking in which they had been sewn, were the articles of furniture that had been brought from Mr. Garden's Manchester attics and lumber-rooms. The rest of the furniture he had taken over from the previous tenants, whom some vicissitude of fortune had taken far away to South Wales. Mr. Garden removed his glasses, wiped them, replaced them, and then, looking over the top of them, spoke: "Where's Dafydd Dafis?" he said. But a cry from his wife, who had come up behind him, interrupted him. She fell back again, not mildly, but in consternation. "Nay, nay, Edward!--I never----" she gasped. "Where's Dafydd Dafis?" Mr. Garden asked again. "Of all the sights! If it isn't enough to--I thought you told me----" Mr. Garden blew his nose and slowly put his handkerchief away again. "Does anybody know where Dafydd Dafis is?" "--and us fit to drop for a cup of tea!" Mrs. Garden continued. "Up since five this morning, and come all that way, and not so much as a fire lighted nor a kettle on to boil----" Mr. Garden was looking about him again, as if he would have said, "These appear to be boards," when suddenly his wife broke energetically in. "Well, it's no good standing looking at it; we must all turn to, that's all.--Jane! Ellen!--Off with them jackets, and one of you make a fire while the other unpacks the groceries. The tea and things are in that box under the shawls--and to think we might have come in wet, and not even a winter-hedge to dry our things on!--There's no wood, you say? Wood enough, marry! I can see nothing else!--And the tea isn't there? Then run out and buy a quarter of a pound to be going on with; I won't have everything unpacked now, not in the middle of this joiner's shop!--Tell her where the grocer's is, Edward----" And she threw off her lavender dolman and bonnet, and bustled about, like the capable creature she was, as ready to turn to as if she had never had a day's help in her life.