"I should say, because the site--belonged to some one," said Ned coolly. "These things will happen--even to Boards. They are part of our commercial standard--_caveat emptor!_ And in this case, the purchaser being the public--well, we don't think of the public as our neighbour. No! the public is an ill dog in temperance Wales!--especially amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. The parson, though, is a good sort--he didn't fancy the subject!"
"Not as he fancied the Welsh motto over the door," laughed Ted. "By George! how he let out about foreign languages and Wales being a conquered country. I had to drop reason and the Norman invasion, or there'd have been a row. He was awfully like Ffluellen--what a genius Shakespeare was."
"Yes! He understood, and you don't. I tell you, Wales is the most Rip-van-winkleish place in the world. You can go to sleep in a fifteenth-century farm and wake up the day after to-morrow in an Intermediate School. I've been in India, and it reminds me awfully of the National Congress. But I like it, though it is fatiguing to any one with a hankering after fact. Still, if there was a little more water--there is none in summer time, you know--and a little less rain, a little more right, and a trifle less righteousness it would do very well."
"Righteousness!" echoed Ted, "there's enough of that, anyhow. Two, four, six, eight, eight belfries to how many souls in the village?--four hundred all told?"
"That's only four chapels; the others are Sunday schools, I'll bet--'the Macleods must have a boat o' their ain.' Then there's the church--that ruin up yonder--it'll have a school too----"
But Ted's attention was diverted. "I say," he remarked, "that's a ripping girl!"
She had come out of a cottage a little way from the inn to intercept Morris Pugh and was engaging him in a lively conversation, despite his hurry. She was tall, dressed in black that glinted, and the fact that her hair was in curling pins did not interfere with her very _voyante_ good looks.
"H'm!" remarked Ned, coming over to see, "reminds me of last Monday--I mean Bank Holiday! Doesn't she?"
The sarcasm was just, but it brought a faintly-annoyed flush to his companion's face. He knew himself to be a lower bred man, and the other Edward Cruttenden had a trick of reminding him of this and of certain other facts which, given fair choice, he would probably have forgotten.