Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
But if this was the "Cambrian's" attitude to the "Montgomery," it was
not that of the Welshmen of Llanyglo. These were now more in number, for
half the staffs of the three hotels were Welsh, and others also had
scented prosperity in the air. Within a few hours friendly relations had
been established between the natives and the readers of _Utopia_. A
Welshman's eyes will always sparkle at the sight of a book or other
piece of the apparatus of knowledge, and the Montgomeryites, friendly
souls all and ready chatters with whomsoever they met, began to drop
into Howell's shop of a morning. None too reluctantly, they suffered
themselves to be drawn out by Howell on the subjects of their studies,
and then it was that Howell became a proud man indeed. For he produced
Eesaac Oliver, home once more from Aberystwith College. Without even
having the titles given to him as he came in at the door that divided
the shop from the dwelling-rooms behind, Eesaac Oliver swapped them book
for book. Howell's breast swelled. "Blodwen--Blodwen--come quick!" he
called. Then, with his eyes sparkling like bits of mica in a pebble and
his small teeth gleaming like a double row of barley, he looked fondly
on the assembly and murmured, "Dear me, I did not know till to-day there
wass so-o-a many books written!" One morning Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Garden
came in in the very middle of one of these galas of the intellect. They
were kept waiting for a minute and more. There were times when the
Llanyglo Stores almost resembled a Debating Room.
It was left to the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia Lacey to restore the
balance that their father's luckless dinner-party had disturbed; and
right well they laboured to that end. They brought all the resources of
Brighton and Paris to bear upon those two amiable but indefatigable
school-teachers, the sisters Topham. They did not avoid them; on the
contrary, they put their heads together and then went out in search of
them. Then, when they had met them, they asked them to tell them whether
it was true that the guillemot laid its blunt-ended egg in order that it
should not roll off ledges, and whether the person who said that
serviceable knife-handles could be made of the stems of the Great Oar
Weed had been correctly informed. And when they failed to come upon
their unsuspecting victims, they cathechised one another.
"As I was ascending the mountains the other day," June would suddenly
break out in the Vernal Squill's raised and staccato voice, "I found
myself walking upon grass. What is grass? State reasons for your
answer."
And Wiggie, assuming the _viva voce_ examination tones of the Club Moss,
would ask her sister what a man was, and whether Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd
could properly be classed as one.
Failing the turning up of those two marriageable brothers, the Misses
June and Wy were likely to be what Mrs. Briggs called "bad to suit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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