annwyl! we have only wan child, let him be a
clargy, or a 'torney, or a doctor, or something smart," and says he, "I
can't afford it." He was rather near or so, you know, was my poor
Griffey; but I never was letting him rest day or night, and the only
thing he wasn't liking was being much talked over. So says I, "Come you,
Jinkins, bach,"--he liked to be called by his sirname--"if you do larn
Howel well, he'll be making his fortune some day," for he do say so, he
do be always saying, "I'll be a great man, and get as much money as
father." I eused to put in the last words of myself, for Howel never was
taking to making money, but 'ould as soon give it away as not. Only poor
Griffey--oh dear! oh dear!--was never knowing that, because I did be
hiding it from him as much as I could.'

Whilst the widow talks on in this strain to her sympathising friends,
her son and Rowland Prothero are in another small room of the house,
engaged in a very different style of conversation. The room in which
they are is worth a few words of description, not for any beauty or
desert of its own, but for its heterogeneous, contents. You would think
a small music warehouse, a miniature tobacco shop, or branch depot of
foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical
instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment.
Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh
harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and
sizes, forms, and nations--the straight English, the short German, and
the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and
tobacco-boxes of various kinds and appearances. Scattered about the room
are play-books without number, from Shakspeare to the dramatists of the
present day; and, interspersed with these, collections of songs of all
countries and of all grades of merit. Some few novels, mostly French,
live with the plays and songs; and Latin, French, German, Italian,
Welsh, Spanish, and English grammars and dictionaries take up their
abode in every available corner. A quantity of fishing tackle and a gun
are thrown upon the window seat, and an embroidered waistcoat, blue
satin cravat, and a pair of yellow kid gloves lie on an unoccupied
chair.

From the general appearance of this room, the imagination would conceive
great things of its inmate. All we shall here say is that he is one who
has the reputation of being a natural genius, and firmly b