Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
The remaining spectators, with the exception of old Mrs. Pritchard, who
resembled a mummy rather than a spectator, partook in varying degrees of
these same characteristics; and there at the table sat Mr. Tudor
Williams, M.P., of Ponteglwys, one of his eyes aflow with tears of
sensibility while the other was glued to the main chance; Baptist,
nationalist, and arguer by metaphor and analogy; an elocutionist, and a
maker of elocutionists by that process of education that consists of
giving a scholar a subject and bidding him straightway speak for five
minutes upon it; and, above all, ever and again suggesting, by slight
gesture or quick glance, that his secret thought was that there, in cap
or corduroys, but for the Grace of God, went Mr. Tudor Williams of
Ponteglwys....
At last he put up his hand, refusing to eat more.
"No more, no more indeed! It is the best bread and but-ter I have tasted
since I was here before, but I should be ill in my stomach.--Dear me,
John Pritchard, the happy hours I have spent in this room! '_Mid
Pleas-sures and Palaces_'--indeed there is tears in my eyes when I see
the dres-ser with the plates on it, and the jugs, and Mrs. Prit-chard's
Bible in the window, just the same as when I was a boy!--Well, I have
had a splen-did tea at all events, and if you will excuse me a min-nit I
will return thanks for it.... Now, my friends!----"
Five minutes later, Mr. Tudor Williams, not so near to the Kerrs' Hafod
that he had the appearance of specially watching it, nor yet so far from
it but that he could see Ned Kerr and his brother Sam setting a rough
window-sash into position, was once more shaking hands and patting
shoulders and exchanging greetings with such of the men and women and
children of Llanyglo as he had not yet seen.
And now that they had got him there they hardly knew what they wanted of
him. That building exploit of the Kerrs having thrust the Inclosures
Dispute a good deal into the background, and Dafydd Dafis's honourable
if sullen refusal to injure men who had risked their lives with him
having given that exploit itself a kind of condonation, it seemed as if
their Member had merely come to a Sasiwn after all. But land had changed
hands: they had a vague sense of impending change and of the discomfort
of change; and, as they answered their Member's questions, the very
presence in their midst of this man who moved behind the scenes of the
drama of large events accentuated this feeling.
"What is he like, this one?" Mr. Tudor Williams asked, gently yet
absent-mindedly patting big John Pritchard's back as he stooped to
cough. They had been speaking of Terry Armfield.
They described Terry as he had appeared to them in the Court at Porth
Neigr.
"Is he taking over any other land?" ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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