Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Death took a hand that winter in Llanyglo's making. They were getting
well up with the Town Hall, in what is now Gardd Street; still the flag
floated at the polehead, in token that they had got thus far without
serious mishap; and then it had to be run down to the half-mast. It was
a common scaffold accident. Harry Kerr, on one of the upper stages,
stepped back upon empty air; Sam sprang forward to save him; and they
picked them both up from among the debris below. A few remembered the
launching of that open boat on that wild night seven years before, and
said that it seemed out of nature that these comparatively young men
should go off before ancient Mrs. Pritchard; and Mrs. Pritchard herself
baa-ed, and said that there would be more room now in the Hafod Unos
whatever. But most of the residents were new-comers now, who knew more
of Tommy Kerr's present delinquencies than of the history of his
brothers, and they could hardly be expected to grieve. They buried them
both at Sarn, under the shadow of that pepper-caster of a
fifteenth-century church tower, and the problem of however the Hafod had
held them all became a thing of the past.
The Town Hall was the outward and visible sign that Llanyglo had not
only caught up with Porth Neigr, but had outstripped it. It had special
conveniences for a centre of administration, which it forthwith became;
and at the election that Autumn Howell Gruffydd was made a Councillor.
He had two branch shops now, one at Porth Neigr and the other at Sarn,
and to his newspaper counter he had added a Library of books bought at
Mudies' clearance sales. He charged fourpence a week for the loan of
each book, which was twopence more than the old stationer's library at
Porth Neigr had charged; but there was the railway-fare to take into
account if you considered the charge extortionate. Later, a good deal
later, when the picture postcard was invented, Howell did rather well
out of that too. He praised your amateur snapshot of the Trwyn or the
Promenade of the façade of the Town Hall, and made you what no doubt
seemed to him a fair offer; namely to give you a dozen prints in
exchange for your film. He then proceeded to fill a revolving stand with
other prints, which he sold at seven for sixpence, or, highly glazed, at
twopence apiece. With pennies and twopences accumulated in this and
similar ways he bought certain house-property behind Ham-and-Egg
Terrace, paying a ground-rent to Edward Garden. He had by this time
acquired a little personal habit of Mr. Tudor Williams's--the habit of
shaking hands with one hand, while the other affectionately kneaded and
patted his interlocutor's right arm from the wrist up to the shoulder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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