Rhys did not hold his head quite so high as usual when he joined Cate and her father at the churchyard stile; and was so quiet during the walk homeward that Cate tossed her hat-crowned red head about in offended pettishness, and Owen looked at him askance, wondering what the good vicar had said to take all the brightness out of him.
William was no less reticent. But, child though he was, he lived in a dream-world of his own, and had ceased to reveal his inner self on the domestic hearth, scared by the loud laughter and mockery that greeted his curious inquiries and precocious remarks.
In his silence, therefore, there was nothing to surprise his mother, who had fallen in with the general opinion that he was sullen. She had seen the vicar lead him aside, and took the reprimand for granted.
The opening words of his conversation with the nine years boy did not seem much like a reprimand.
'So, William, I hear you are going to be a great builder? And Mr. Morris tells me you want to know all about the Tower of Babel and Solomon's Temple, the Druidical temples, and St. Helen's Church here, with bridges and I do not know what beside. Now which of all these are we to talk about first?'
He had unlocked the boy's heart as with a magic key. Here was some one else who did not laugh at him. Their conversation lasted little over a quarter of an hour, and William was frequently the catechist, but it broke off like a serial story, 'to be continued.' And though it had been chiefly about building and builders, the vicar had not let the boy go away without a few words of gentle advice on his duty to himself and others--a lesson referred back to the two tablets of stone delivered to Moses amid the fiery terrors of Sinai.
After that there was generally a Sunday morning chat in the churchyard, and on one occasion the vicar took the boy home with him to dinner, a distinction that puzzled Mrs. Edwards exceedingly, and made Rhys no less jealous.
The vicar, a small man surmounted by a big clerical wig, had simply shown the boy a few architectural pictures in illustrated books, with a brief description of his own, the letterpress being English, and the boy's education stopping short at Welsh.
There was a water-colour drawing upon the parlour wall of a ruined castle with a tower that had been rent from battlement to base, and appeared in the act of falling. It was too remarkable to escape William's observation. He eyed it intently for some minutes. At length he asked, 'What place is that, sir?'