"I don't exactly see how it could have been done," remarked Ted argumentatively. "If they went bankrupt they must have had a valuator, and then----"
"I've no doubt they had," broke in Ned impatiently, "but what I tell you is the long and short of it."
"Besides, I don't consider the workman is to be blamed at all," argued Ted. "So long as he does his work fairly and gets his pay for doing that work, no one has a right to find fault with him. Then think of the women and children."
Aura, whose face had grown keen over the discussion, looked swiftly at Ned, awaiting his answer. He, in one of his worst moods, gave it unhesitatingly: "My dear fellow, what is the use of breeding up a race of thieves and swindlers?"
With that he bent himself to take the hill at a gallop, leaving those two agreeing as to the women and children, agreeing also in a thousand superficial likings and dislikings born of youth, high spirits, and no small lack of thought.
But at a sharp turn amid the tumbled débris, they overtook Lord Blackborough opposed to a small boy seated disconsolately on the ground in a puddle of fresh milk, dotted with the remains of a broken jug, while an ill-looking collie dog yapped from the shelter of a more than usually large block of worthless slate.
"It wasn't my fault," explained Ned ruefully. "That brute of a dog upset him, trying to bark and run away at the same time."
The small boy, having now realised his misfortune, was blubbering in Welsh.
"I don't understand what he is saying," said Aura, looking up at Ted, after bending over the urchin with English consolation. "Do you?"
He shook his head. "That is the worst of wild Wales; one can't be compassionate."
Ned looked at them a trifle contemptuously.
"He's afraid. A boy never blubbers like that without cause, and he isn't hurt. Here, you!" he continued, hauling the child up incontinently, "don't howl. I go with you home--_catre_--do you understand?--_catre_--_mam_."
With which Welsh smattering, he dragged up the unwilling boy, still blubbering, towards a group of slate cottages which showed a few hundred yards away. Such desolate-looking cottages, only to be differentiated by their straight lines from the masses of débris about them.