Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"It is a pit-ty Mr. Williams fall out with Squire Wynne," Hugh Morgan
remarked. "It will be the Squire who will have to give them notice,
whatever."
"They quarrel one day outside the Court at Porth Neigr."
"But indeed, Howell Gruffydd, Mr. Tudor Williams wass in the right--it
was about the Tithes, and the Tithe iss a wick-ked system----"
"Aw-w-w, but the Welss Members they alter all that very soon!"
"But the Squire and the Bis-sop of St. Asaph is great friends----"
"Indeed that Bis-sop of St. Asaph he look at a Chap-pil like as if it
wass not worth his eyesight!"
Dafydd Dafis, who sat on a child's bench, looking moodily at the floor,
had not spoken yet. He gave a quick glance up, and then looked down
again.
"The Church iss a great robber," he muttered within his moustache....
They discussed questions of ecclesiastical polity....
"It iss a great robber," said Dafydd Dafis, again resuming his former
attitude.
Then Howell Gruffydd rose, and one or two others followed his example.
There was the day's work to be done. Soon all moved to the door, but
before going about their businesses they went to take another look at
that astonishing house.
But they looked only from a distance. If they had assumed that the
Kerrs, having worked all night, would now be sleeping, they were wrong.
They could see them, three of them, still busily walling, filling,
shovelling out sand.
"They try to finiss before Sunday," Hugh Morgan said.
But big John Pritchard glared sternly at him.
"They care noth-thing for Sunday, those ones," he said. "That other one
will have gone for more beer." And he added, in solemn tones, "It iss a
den of li-ons!"
The fencing dispute had now sunk into insignificance.
It quickly appeared, even as John Pritchard had said, that the Kerrs
cared nothing for Sunday. At a quarter to ten on the morning of that
day, Howell Gruffydd, in his tight black frock-coat and bowler hat,
passing up the sandy gully on his way to the Methodist Chapel, heard
sounds of carousing. He turned aside to look. The door of the Hafod
stood open, and a second barrel of beer, together with provisions and
some sticks of furniture, had been fetched during the night. Tommy, the
youngest of the Kerrs, was already drunk and singing. The eldest of
them, seeing Howell Gruffydd, gave him an insolently familiar nod, as if
he had as much right to be there as anybody else.
"Cold mornin'," he said. "Are ye coming in to hev' a tot?"
Howell turned away.
After service, Howell encountered John Pritchard. John, too, had heard
that godless levity from afar. Others gathered round them by the gap in
the thymy earth-wall, and John raised his voice on high. It shook with
bitter zeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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