thern breeze
came in through the open window scented by the roses and the lemon
verbena growing against the wall. His father was pacing up and down
the hall and the verandah restlessly awaiting him, fearing lest the
whole episode of the day before might not have been one of his
waking dreams. His failing sight made reading almost a torture and
writing more a matter of feeling than visual perception. Time
therefore hung wearisomely on his hands; Bridget was not a good
reader, besides being too busy a housekeeper to have time for it.
Had David really returned to him? Would he sometimes read aloud and
sometimes write his letters, or even the finish of his History? Too
good to be true!

But there was David coming down the stairs, greeting him with tender
affection. "Read and write for you, father? Of course! But before I
go back to London--and unfortunately I _must_ go back early in
August--I'm going to take you to see an oculist--Bristol or Clifton
perhaps--and get your sight restored."

After breakfast, however, the father decided he must take David
round the village, to see and be seen. David was not very anxious to
go, but as the Revd. Howel looked disappointed he gave in.

It had to be got over some time or other. So they first visited the
church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing
battlemented tower. Here David asked to inspect the registers and
found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in
mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)--the record of his father's
marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was
twenty-three and the Revd. Howel forty at the time) and of his own
baptism two years afterwards.

Then issuing from the church, father and son walked through the
village, the father pointing out the changes for better or worse
that had taken place in four years, and not noticing the vagueness
of his son's memories of either persons or features in the
landscape. The village, like most Welsh villages, was of
white-washed cottages, slate-roofed, but it was embowered with that
luxuriance of foliage and flowers which makes Glamorganshire--out of
sight of the coal-mining--seem an earthly paradise. Every now and
then the Revd. Howel would nudge his son and say: "That man who
spoke was old Goronwy, as big a scoundrel now as he was five years
ago," or he would introduce David to a villager of whom he thought
more favourably. If she were a young woman she generally smirked and