When his errand recurred to him, William had disappeared, and notwithstanding Rhys' longer legs, the fatigue of the small ones, the gathering dusk, and the steepness of the ascending path to the farm, the truant crossed the threshold first.
At once uneasiness resolved itself into displeasure. He was scolded on all sides, and threatened with the loss of a supper if ever he ventured to give them such a fright again.
'I wanted Robert Jones,' was all the excuse he made. The scolding was received with stolid silence, which was called sullenness.
Yet he had not forgotten Owen's picture of his mother's distress, or his grave reproof for straying away, and had he been differently received, he might have been contrite and sued for pardon.
It is a difficult matter, even in these analytic days, to search out the inner workings of the child-mind, or to understand all that influences wayward moods. How were those rudely-cultivated farmers to penetrate beneath the surface, to see the undeveloped oak in the immature acorn?
'Robert Jones do be spoiling that boy,' said Mrs. Edwards, when the child was in bed. 'I wonder what he wanted with the man?'
'Wanted? Sure, he wanted to ask if stones do grow like trees,' said Rhys, in a tone of impatient scorn. 'It was only last week he did be asking me if the trees made the wind, because it was always windy when the trees tossed about.'
'Well, _don't_ they?' queried stolid Davy, amidst a roar of laughter, in which even the mother joined.
'Now, don't you be as silly as Willem. I never before knew you ask such a foolish question,' said Rhys dogmatically.
'No, Davy,' explained his mother, without stopping her busy wheel, 'it is the wind that blows the trees about,'--an answer which sufficed for him. He was not curious to learn what caused the winds, or whence they came, as William had been. He accepted facts as they were, untroubled by vain speculations.
Undoubtedly William--the father's namesake, her youngest born--was the mother's darling, in spite of his odd ways. And however cross she might have been overnight, in the morning, when the others had dispersed, she took him to task for straying away without leave; not angrily, but sadly, showing him the trouble he was likely to cause, and the anxiety she had had, remembering the time when he was lost before.