Gethin! We are coming from the same place, you see, and you are
knowing all about me, and I about you, and that I supp-o-s-e is making
me feel more like a mother to you than to the other lodgers."

"Well, you _have_ been like a mother to me, mending my clothes and
watching me so sharp with the drink. Dei anwl! I don't think I ever
took a glass with a friend without you finding me out, and calling me
names. 'Drunken blackguard!' you called me one night, when as sure as
I'm here I had only had a bottle of gingerpop in Jim Jones's shop," and
he laughed boisterously.

"Well, well," said Mrs. Parry, "if I wronged you then, be bound you
deserved the blame some other time, and 'twas for your own good I was
telling you, my boy. Indeed, I wish I was going home with you to the
old neighbourhood. The-r-e's glad they'll be to see you at Garthowen."

"Well, I don't know how my father will receive me," said her companion
thoughtfully. "Ann and Will I am not afraid of, but the old man--he
was very angry with me."

"What _did_ you do long ago to make him so angry, Gethin? I have heard
Tom Powell and Jim Bowen blaming him very much for being so hard to his
eldest son; they said he was always more fond of Will than you, and was
often beating you."

"Halt!" said Gethin, bringing his fist down so heavily on the table
that the tea-things jingled, "not a word against the old man--the best
father that ever walked, and I was the worst boy on Garthowen slopes,
driving the chickens into the water, shooing the geese over the hedges,
riding the horses full pelt down the stony roads, setting fire to the