rd on the land, and
she got therefrom all that there was to be got; and whatever that she
earned she hid in a hole in the ground. "Handy is little money," she
murmured, "to pay for lodgings and clothes preacher, and the old scamps
of boys who teach him." She lived on potatoes and buttermilk, and she
dressed her land all the time. People came to remark of her: "There's no
difference between Mali Pencoch and the mess in her cow-house."
Days, weeks, and months moved slowly; and years sped. Josi passed from
the School of Grammar to College Carmarthen, and Mali gave him all the
money that she had, and prayed thus: "Big Man bach, terrible would
affairs be if I perished before the boy was all right. Let you me keep
my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd. Amen."
Even so. Josi had a name among Students' College, and even among
ordained rulers of pulpits; and Mali went about her duties joyful and
glad; it was as if the Kingdom of the Palace of White Shirts was within
her. While at her labor she mumbled praises to the Big Man for His
goodness, until an awful thought came to her: "Insulting am I to the
Large One bach. Only preachers are holy enough to stand in their pray.
Not stop must I now; go on my knees will I in the dark."
She did not kneel on her knees for the stiffness that was in her limbs.
Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto
Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted: "Bigger than Sion is Moriah
and of lofts has not the Temple two?"
"Idle is your babbling," one admonished her. "Does a calf feed his
mother?"
Josi heard the call. His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one
to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear
his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother: "God has given me to wed
Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall. Kill you a pig and salt
him and send to me the meat."
All that Josi asked Mali gave, and more; she did not abate in any of her
toil for five years, when a disease laid hold on Josi and he died. Mali
cleaned her face and her hands in the Big Pistil from which you draw
drinking water, and she brought forth her black garments and put them on
her; and because of her age she could not weep. The day before that her
son was to be buried, she went to the house of her neighbor Sara Eye
Glass, and to her she said: "Wench nice, perished is Josi and off away
am I. Console his widow fach I must. Tell you me t
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