ails dreaming on
the sky-line, and the curling clouds of smoke that came now and then
from a steamer passing Dullingham Point were interesting me deeply.
There was a remoteness about the little girl now, since I had seen
her unusual agility, and I was trying to harden my heart against her.
Loneliness I felt was best for me. She did not speak, but stood
looking at me. I turned my eyes round and saw that she was looking at
my crutches, which were lying beside me aslant the green hillock
where I sat. Her face had turned grave and pitiful.

'Oh! I forgot,' she said. 'I wish I had not run away from you now.'

'You may run where you like for what I care,' I said. But the words
were very shaky, and I had no sooner said them than I wished them
back. She made no reply for some time, and I sat plucking the
wild-flowers near my hands, and gazing again across the sea. At last
she said,

'Would you like to come in our garden? It's such a nice garden.'

I could resist her no longer. That voice would have drawn me had she
spoken in the language of the Toltecs or the lost Zamzummin. To
describe it would of course be impossible. The novelty of her accent,
the way in which she gave the 'h' in 'which,' 'what,' and 'when,' the
Welsh rhythm of her intonation, were as bewitching to me as the
_timbre_ of her voice. And let me say here, once for all, that when I
sat down to write this narrative, I determined to give the English
reader some idea of the way in which, whenever her emotions were
deeply touched, her talk would run into soft Welsh diminutives; but I
soon abandoned the attempt in despair. I found that to use colloquial
Welsh with effect in an English context is impossible without
wearying English readers and disappointing Welsh ones.

Here, indeed, is one of the great disadvantages under which this book
will go out to the world. While a story-teller may reproduce, by
means of orthographical devices, something of the effect of Scottish
accent, Irish accent, or Manx accent, such devices are powerless to
represent Welsh accent.

I got up in silence, and walked by her side out of the churchyard
towards her father's cottage, which was situated between the new
church and the old, and at a considerable distance from the town of
Raxton on one side, and the village of Graylingham on the other. Her
eager young limbs would every moment take her ahead of me, for she
was as vigorous as a fawn. But by the time she was half a yard in
advanc