'There now, keep up your spirits, Mrs Jinkins, fach,' said a fourth, entering with a comfortable glass of gin and water that did seem of an exhilarating nature.
'There's a comfort Howel will be to you now!' said a fifth triumphantly.
'Deed to goodness, Griffey Jinkins was a saving man, and you have lost him, Mrs Jinkins, fach,' began the friend with the gin and water; 'but I am seeing no use in takking on so. When John Jones died, he was leaving me with ten children, and they have all come on somehow. And you have only wan son, and he is so ginteel! Drink you this, my dear, and don't be down-hearted.'
Mrs Jenkins turned from the tea to the gin and water with no apparent reluctance, and swallowed a portion of it. Revived by the beverage, she responded to the condolences of her friends by more rockings, sobs, and applications of the handkerchief and finally unburdened herself of her grief in the following manner.
'My son Howel, oh yes, he'll be a blessing to me, I know. Says I to my poor Griffey--oh, dear, only to be thinking of him now!--says I, "Let us be giving Howel a good eddication, and he so clever as never was, and able to be learning everything he do put his mind to, and never daunted at nothing--grammar, nor music, nor Latin, nor no heathen languages, and able to read so soon as he could speak, and knowing all the beasts in the ark one from another, when he was no bigger than that," says I, to my poor Griffey; "oh, annwyl! we have only wan child, let him be a clargy, or a 'torney, or a doctor, or something smart," and says he, "I can't afford it." He was rather near or so, you know, was my poor Griffey; but I never was letting him rest day or night, and the only thing he wasn't liking was being much talked over. So says I, "Come you, Jinkins, bach,"--he liked to be called by his sirname--"if you do larn Howel well, he'll be making his fortune some day," for he do say so, he do be always saying, "I'll be a great man, and get as much money as father." I eused to put in the last words of myself, for Howel never was taking to making money, but 'ould as soon give it away as not. Only poor Griffey--oh dear! oh dear!--was never knowing that, because I did be hiding it from him as much as I could.'