"Ha, ha, ha! He say nine! I ask him again.--There was a young gentleman ... but, dear me, there is the s'op again! We must earn our living, all of us. Business before pleas-sure--it is a good rule----" And he squeezed through to the counter again, while his wife boiled more eggs and spiked the cranpogs on a fork, five at a time. After tea Mrs. Garden was seen to be pulling up her skirt and to be feeling for her pocket in the folds of her petticoat; but with an imperceptible gesture her husband restrained her. He thanked Gruffydds, and they returned to their own cottage, Eesaac Oliver accompanying them to help to pile up the matchboards and to take the furniture from its sacking. The cottage was much like the other cottages of the place. Its ceiling consisted of tacked-up sheets, inside which spiders and dust and sand whispered and the wind rippled. The black mantelpiece had brass candlesticks and china ornaments, and on one side of the tall clock was a grocer's almanac-portrait of Mr. Gladstone, while on the other was one of Dr. Rees, the President of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. A sampler, rather difficult to see in the bad light, hung immediately within the door, and the window opened six inches, in which position it had to be propped with a short stick. There were geraniums on its sill, and a red sausage filled with sand kept out the draught when it was closed. The outer door of the second cottage was to be permanently fastened up when the match-boarding should be finished. The cottages adjoining belonged to fishermen, the one with a wife and children, the other a widower who kept his departed wife in mind by means of a number of framed and glazed cenotaphs, consisting of a black ground with white angels mourning over a tombstone, and, above, the words, "_Er Serchog Cof_----"