half-way up this hill we
can descry, faintly through the driving rain, a long white house, with
gables and a veranda overgrown with red roses. And above all is a strip
of grey sky, from which the white rain falls noiselessly, ceaselessly.

"Here's a place!" says Miss Million disgustedly. "Unless something
happens to make it a bit different, I shan't stay no three months, nor
three weeks. It fair gives me the pip, and I wish I was back in good
old London!"

"Cheer up. The rain may leave off one of these days," I say, "or some of
the people of the neighbourhood may come to call."

This afternoon both my prognostications were fulfilled.

The rain did leave off, and the valley in which this house is set became
a green and smiling paradise, scented with the fragrance of wet pine
trees, and of sweet peas and honeysuckle, and suddenly pregnant with
that other flavour which is new to me--part scent, part sight, part
sound. "The flavour of Wales"--some quality quite indescribable; some
wild native atmosphere richer, sadder, sweeter, more "original" than any
that I had breathed in those flat, smiling garden plots that are
described as "rural England."

No wonder I've always heard that Welsh people who have left their
country suffer at times from such poignant longings, such "hiraeth" or
home-sickness as is unknown to the colonising, conquering Saxon!

Even Miss Million and Miss Vi Vassity are more inclined to approve of
the scenery now! And this afternoon "the neighbourhood" called on the
new tenant of this place.

"The neighbourhood" seems to comprise any other house within an
afternoon's walk, or even motor-drive.

I heard the car drive up, from my attic bedroom, and I flew down to the
front door. For cook was baking, and both of what she calls "them girls"
had taken their departure. It was the legitimate afternoon out of
Maggie-Mary, the first housemaid. And Blodwen, the other, had asked
special permission to attend a funeral in the next valley.

I had said I would be housemaid in her place, so she had sallied forth,
all new black and gratified grins.

I found myself opening the door to three heterogeneous parties of people
at once, and ushering them into the faded, pretty, pot-pourri-scented
drawing-room. It was empty. My mistress and her guests had suddenly
fled!

They--Miss Million, Vi Vassity, and Mrs. Flukes--had betaken themselves
into the bedroom that has been given over to the baby's nursery, and
were sit