“Why did you ever leave Wales, Mr Morgan?” He put a new cigar severely between his teeth and looked at me as if he did not know or even see me. I ran off with the wings to Philip. CHAPTER IV HOB-Y-DERI-DANDO[1] [Footnote 1: i.e. _Hey-derry-down_, or _Upsa-daisy-dando_.] I alone was listening to the swan story, but it would have been more in accordance with the custom of the house if it had been told in a large company out in the yard--in one of the bedrooms--in the library itself--or in the dining-room (where there was a vast sideboard bearing a joint, cheese, bread, fruit, cakes, and bottles of ale, to which the boys or the visitors resorted, for meals without a name, at all hours of the day). Most often the yard and the steps leading down to it were the meeting-place. The pigeons, the conservatory, with its bicycles, a lathe and all sorts of beginnings and remains, the dogs, above all the sun and the view of the Wilderness, attracted everyone to the yard as a common centre for the Morgans and those who gathered round one or other of them. Thus, for example, the pigeons did not belong to the Morgans at all, but to one Higgs, who was unable to keep them at his home. He was always in and out of the yard, frequently bringing friends who might or might not become friends of the family. Everyone was free to look at the pigeons, note which had laid and which had hatched, to use the lathe, to take the dogs out if they were willing, to go upstairs and see the wonders--the eggs of kites, ravens, buzzards, curlews, for example, taken by Jack and Roland near Abercorran--and to have a meal at the sideboard or a cup of tea from one of Ann’s brews in the kitchen.