edroom for hours, being nurse, and doing the thing thoughtfully
and diligently. Another day, her mother was unhappy. Anna would
stand with her legs apart, glowering, balancing on the sides of
her slippers. She laughed when the goslings wriggled in Tilly's
hand, as the pellets of food were rammed down their throats with
a skewer, she laughed nervously. She was hard and imperious with
the animals, squandering no love, running about amongst them
like a cruel mistress.

Summer came, and hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish mite
dancing about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more than she
loved her.

But always in the child was some anxious connection with the
mother. So long as Mrs. Brangwen was all right, the little girl
played about and took very little notice of her. But
corn-harvest went by, the autumn drew on, and the mother, the
later months of her pregnancy beginning, was strange and
detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, the old, unhealthy
uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility came on the child
again. If she went to the fields with her father, then, instead
of playing about carelessly, it was:

"I want to go home."

"Home, why tha's nobbut this minute come."

"I want to go home."

"What for? What ails thee?"

"I want my mother."

"Thy mother! Thy mother none wants thee."

"I want to go home."

There would be tears in a moment.

"Can ter find t'road, then?"

And he watched her scudding, silent and intent, along the
hedge-bottom, at a steady, anxious pace, till she turned and was
gone through the gateway. Then he saw her two fields off, still
pressing forward, small and urgent. His face was clouded as he
turned to plough up the stubble.

The year drew on, in the hedges the berries shone red and
twinkling above bare twigs, robins were seen, great droves of
birds dashed like spray from the fallow, rooks appeared, black
and flapping down to earth, the ground was cold as he pulled the
turnips, the roads were churned deep in mud. Then the turnips
were pitted and work was slack.

Inside the house it was dark, and quiet. The child flitted
uneasily round, and now and again came her plaintive, startled
cry:

"Mother!"

Mrs. Brangwen was heavy and unresponsive, tired, lapsed back.
Brangwen went on working out of doors.

At evening, when he came in to milk, the child would run
behind him. Then, in the cosy cow-sheds, with the doors shut and
the air looking warm by the light of the hanging lan