Mushroom Town

ore than those greased cartridges were the real cause of the Mutiny. He was merely vindicating the claims of a temperament that kept him, and would always keep him, poor, yet a

and triumphant with the double bar-as penillion concerns itself mainly with two themes, namely, the loved mountains and lakes of Cambria, and quick and topical inventions of personal gossip, Dafydd Dafis held his hearers both by their deeper sentiments and their lighter f

of the Welsh in Liverpool, which is the capital of Wales, received him with resignation. Fair and softly goes far in a day, and he knew that the luxury of

ng he had the satisfaction of seeing Dafydd Dafis and the youth actually begin the

as he worked, or worked a little as

wore a red "pirate" cap, that is, a cone of knitted wool with a bob at the peak that fell on one side of her head: and for the same reason she wore black stockings pulled well up over the bamboo-like joints of her bony knees. She was a slight, dark pixy of a child, o

improve. By and by she was to be found squatted down by the sand-blown palings, surrounded by the Llanyglo children, keeping a shop, of which the commodities were shells, pebbles, starfish and the like. Her dolls and

ffydd and other youngsters as his companions, he scrambled among the rocks at the base of the Trwyn, or climbed the headland itself, or digged for bait, or went out in the boats, or fished for crabs with split mussels off the jetty end (he stuffed his catch up underneath his blue jersey, where the animals crawled about on his friendly and naked skin).

to Manchester f

ddle of September. Then he still further enlarged his circle of acquaintance. He attached himself to a farmer's lad, who shot rabbits of an evening among the sandhills, and, after being allowed to fire the gun, gave his catapult away to a "kid." July passed. The match-boarding progressed by fits and st

the peak of her red "pirate" cap, and then the cap itself was cast aside. From careful nightly brushings of her "new" pleated navy-blue frock with the white braid, she allowed the pleats to get full of sand, and, where the prints of her ribbed soles had been, now her bare feet patterned the beach. Her bamboo legs were brown as seaweed and barked up the shins; and when (with a totally abandoned display of knickers) she emptied her shoes of sand, she would sit down in a pool as soon as not.-And Mrs. Garde

oyal Hotel shandrydan that came to take her to Porth Neigr, and tears stood in eyes, and sobs choked throats, and shawls and hands and handkerchiefs were waved as the vehicle started off over the muffling sandhills, and as many promises were made that M

and so-a hap-py, all living under one roof, till Mary Evans die and wass buried, and the changes come, and where are those boys now? They are scatter. One is in Bangor, and one is in

-stricken as if he had been reciting an e

ere was as much rejoicing as if she had been a

, and more blankets, and a screen for the door, and a small family medicine-chest, and Minetta's Compendium Box of Games. And that was bad news for John Willie Garden, for it brought the shadow of his own departure near; and yet it was good news too, fo

old, he climbed the Trwyn in order t

eady the place was full of memories for John Willie Garden. That wide pool in the sands that reflected the sky had not been there a fortnight before-for the sea had now lost its summer look, and it changed the configuration of the shore at night. A puff of low-blown smoke showed where Dafydd Dafis was giving a boat a coat of tar. There was the small crack of a gun-John Willie's friend was s

lace where his father had taken a cottage and might presently be building a house. He would boast over them in the Welsh words he had learned, and

g even so, at Pannal School,

ates and lustre jugs, and the china sitting hen where they kept the eggs. The wind began to hoot in the throat of the chimney. Mrs. Garden's ears became accustomed to the louder falling of the breakers; soon the cessation of this noise would have been the arresting thing. October wore on. There was very little fishing now. Each of the three Chapels had a week-night service, and nearly everybody went to all three. Twice the schoolroom was thrown open for concerts; but most of the singing took place in the kitchen. Sometimes, on the edge of the dark, a fantastic irregular shape would be seen, rising and dipping and lurching as it approached over the sandhills; it was Dafydd Dafis, carrying on his back the wooden case that contained his harp. Save for these infrequent diversions, the winter was a dead time at Llanyglo. The hamlet rolled itself up and hibernate

black as iron, on others as white as ash with the tumult of the wind. There was snow on the mountains, but little at Llanyglo. Even John Willie did not want to bathe. In the daytime he tried to rig up a sail on his mother's tricycle

the scraping together of his interest money, could scarce have re-papered the dilapidated walls of the Plas dining-room. He had other property also, thirty miles down the coast, which he had never the heart to go and see. It was there that the family fortunes had been sunk. A score of broken shaft-chimneys and heaps of fallen masonry on a promontory were all he had to show for the good Wynne money-these, and a deed-box full

ral quacks in our own day, who advertise infallible cures for the neuritis he and his kind have bequeathed to their descendants. The only sign the Squire himself showed of this was a slightly ochreous eye.-Then, when he had poured out the port, "It's you who have the money nowadays," he said, meaning by "you" Gladstonian Liberals. "Look at this ceiling of mine. There isn'

rden t

t to the corn-chandler's shop. Or I'll see him if you like. But i

t?" Edward G

're not Welsh

N

hey're a queer people here, and when you get to the bottom of it, practically the question of landowning resolves itself into keeping on t

ho the mortgagees are. But if they're Welsh, so much the better for them. I mean if they introduce changes, or go at things like a

his ne

egan to fence, and there was a Dafydd Dafis sort of fellow there, and this man Rodgers thought that because he wore strings round the knees of his corduroys he wasn't anybody of consequence ... and there

Squire's paths and the moss in the Squire's grass, Edward Garden thanked the Squire for his advice and took his l

n by the shore. From a stone quarry on the Porth Neigr road stone was still being got for the extension of Porth Neigr itself; and it would actually be nearer to bring it to Llanyglo. Sheard saw to that also, and Edward Garden, taking the Squire's advice, put Dafydd Dafis, match-boarder, in charge of the work. It would take time, but

ptory specifications. His room was to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. The letters also contained complaints to his mother that his health was seriously impaired by arduous study; so was the health of his friend Perc

er the shelter of their boats down by the jetty, but instead made a kind of club-house of the triangular pile of floor-boards that the Porth Neigr timber merchant presently delivered. They climbed inside this slatted prism, hung the interstices with sa

ward Garden's new house as in order to correct a certain tendency to wild and disproportionate talk. Inde

is not so big as the railway station at Porth Neigr! Indeed, the Plas is big-ger, but it is di-lap-i-date, a pit-ty t

ll, and you shan't find a handful of corn th

sixteen hor

Squire, h

rcelyn in the mines-th

to build stables i

build any more we be bigger t

ides being the head of the railway, had a market place, tw

hapel, Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd did multiplication sums and Welsh-English exercises upon them. John Willie's eyes danced when they saw the scaffolding and ladders. He was six rungs up a ladder before you could have turned round. He was up that ladder and do

r was such importance as that with which he came nigh to bursting. The rocks and the rabbits, the boats and the Trwyn, no longer called him; here was not only a house going up, but his house. In his father's absence he could give orders. He became knowing in limes and mortars, expert in the use of the plumb and level. He strutted about with a square, setting it carelessly against angles, and derided Eesaac Oliver and his

sound-deadening sandhills. But how all at once the work came to a sudden stop-how that toast-rack stood against the sky for another year without a slate upon it-and how Edward Garden, away in Manchester, had once more t