upposed to have
slighted some person of their family--a tenth cousin!--anything turns
their blood. Or you have once looked straight at them without speaking,
and you discover years after that they have chosen to foist on you their
idea of your idea at the moment; and they have the astounding presumption
to account this misreading of your look to the extent of a full
justification, nothing short of righteous, for their treachery and your
punishment! O those Welshwomen!

The much-suffering lord of Earlsfont stretched forth his open hand, palm
upward, for a testifying instrument to the plain truth of his catalogue
of charges. He closed it tight and smote the table. 'Like mother--and
grandmother too--like daughter!' he said, and generalised again to
preserve his dignity: 'They're aflame in an instant. You may see them
quiet for years, but it smoulders. You dropped the spark, and they time
the explosion.'

Caroline said to Mr. Camminy: 'You are sure you can give us the day?'

'All of it,' he replied, apologising for some show of restlessness. 'The
fact is, Miss Adister, I married a lady from over the borders, and though
I have never had to complain of her yet, she may have a finale in store.
It's true that I love wild Wales.'

'And so do I' Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.

'You will pardon me, Camminy,' said Mr. Adister.

The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so
magnanimously humiliating himself. 'Sir! Sir!' he said. 'Yes, Welsh blood
is queer blood, I own. They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles
offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive.
The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible. They
are born, it would seem, with more than the common allowance of kibes for
treading on: a severe misfortune for them. Now for their merits: they
have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are hospitable to teach the
Arab a lesson: I do believe their life is their friend's at
need--seriously, they would lay it down for him: or the wherewithal,
their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed harp of three
generations back, worth now in current value sixpence halfpenny as a
curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they'll keep against
their own desire to heap on you everything they have--if they love you,
and you at the same time have struck their imaginations. Offend them,
however, and it's war, declared or covert. And I must a