Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And, after he had been shown the magnificent ruin of a staircase, and
had noted without showing the grass on the Squire's paths and the moss
in the Squire's grass, Edward Garden thanked the Squire for his advice
and took his leave. He was able to come to terms with Sheard, and in the
following spring a new house began to go up in Llanyglo.
The site Edward Garden had selected for his house lay a little way
behind the row of cottages, over the thatches of which it looked out to
the sea. Rock cropped up there, amid a waste of bents and potentilla and
sea-thrift and thyme, and a rill slipped over moss and, a little further
on, disappeared into the sand, to emerge again down by the shore. From a
stone quarry on the Porth Neigr road stone was still being got for the
extension of Porth Neigr itself; and it would actually be nearer to
bring it to Llanyglo. Sheard saw to that also, and Edward Garden, taking
the Squire's advice, put Dafydd Dafis, match-boarder, in charge of the
work. It would take time, but it would save time. And, so long as it was
understood that it was Dafydd Dafis who might say to this man "Come,"
and he came, and to the other "Go," and he went, Edward Garden did not
anticipate difficulties did he wish, later, to "stiffen" his supply of
labour by importing a plumber, or a mason, or a carpenter or two from
Manchester.
So, in the spring, the rock was cleared and chisels began to clink; and
John Willie Garden, away at school in Pannal, could scarce contain
himself until the summer holidays should come. He sent, by letter, the
most peremptory specifications. His room was to be thus and thus, and
not otherwise. The letters also contained complaints to his mother that
his health was seriously impaired by arduous study; so was the health of
his friend Percy Briggs: indeed, all the fellows were remarking how
greatly in need of a change of air he and Percy seemed. Mrs. Garden's
chief preoccupation was that the new house should have water upstairs
and a cupboard at every turn.
And as that was the first building of their own that the folk of
Llanyglo had ever seen, its progress became their daily talk. The
farmers came from inland to look at it, and, as the weather grew milder,
the fishermen no longer smoked of an evening under the shelter of their
boats down by the jetty, but instead made a kind of club-house of the
triangular pile of floor-boards that the Porth Neigr timber merchant
presently delivered. They climbed inside this slatted prism, hung the
interstices with sacking as a protection from the wind, and smoked and
talked, while the stars peeped down on them. They talked of progress and
innovation, and of how little they had ever thought they would live to
see such a change as this on the face of their sandhills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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