Hither then I often strolled during the morning hours when Dr Wayne was absorbed in his newspapers or his correspondence, and from the date of my first intrusion at Pen Maelgwyn I always received a courteous welcome from Mr and Mrs Davies, the tenants of the place, who held a couple of hundred acres of varied but indifferent land. That Mr Hannaniah Davies belonged to the old school was evident from his speech, his dress and his professed outlook on life itself. Having served as bailiff for many years to a neighbouring squire he spoke English easily and correctly, and moreover with a well-bred accent. His wife Mary, on the other hand, could scarcely aspire to a word of any language save her native Welsh, so that our intercourse was of necessity confined to gesticulation and smiles, or to a few trivial phrases of which the expressions "Dim Saesneg" on her part and of "Dim Cymraeg" on mine, were perhaps the most lucid and useful. With Hannaniah however I often held converse--on the war, on politics, on travel, on religious controversy; and though he was bigoted and benighted in his tenets yet he could argue with politeness and good temper, which constitutes a virtue in itself, and that no common one. Our debates were usually held in the kitchen (which I vastly preferred to the chill musty parlour with its garish modern furniture and its repellent portraits of pastors and demagogues) and in this low warm cosy chamber I loitered for many a pleasant hour. The uneven stone floor was generally strewn with lily-white sand; the settle and chairs and dresser of pale Welsh oak shone brightly with Mary's affectionate polishing; I loved the many quaint old jugs and plates which had happily escaped the accursed hand of the plundering collector. In the deep-set space of the sole window flourished Mary's winter garden, a miscellaneous series of pots and saucers containing a fine geranium, a fuchsia, a trailing white campanula, some musk and a bizarre vegetable of the leek family that resembled a shining green octopus set on end. Above our heads depended from the rafters fine hams and bunches of odorous sage and marjoram. In this old-time chamber I often partook of my "merenda," which invariably consisted of a glass of buttermilk with one or two square currant-engrained biscuits known to the polite world as Garibaldis, but owning a less romantic if more descriptive name in the days of my boyhood. This matutinal hospitality, I may add, was repaid not in coin but by the loan of papers and periodicals which Hannaniah read by the aid of a pair of antiquated spectacles, that reposed on the great sheepskin folio Welsh Bible always ready for use. Thus alternately reading aloud and discoursing, with Mary's clogs clattering in and out of the fragrant kitchen, I often succeeded in making the worthy Hannaniah waste an hour or more of his valuable agricultural time in the course of the morning.