ttons, and such like--all those things which together
are known as haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in
what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that
woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a
parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the
shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and
bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite
ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what
nobody wants."

The first year passed happily, and the second year; and in the third
Joseph was stirred to go forward.

"What use to stop here all the life?" he asked himself. "Better to go
off."

He put his belongings in his box and went to Swansea.

"Very busy emporium I am in," were the words he sent to Madlen. "And the
wage is twenty pounds."

Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: "Ten acres of land, and a
cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty,
and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for
my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting
passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to
the Respected.

"Pounds without number he is earning," she cried. "Rich he'll be.
Swells are youths shop."

"Gifts from the tip of my tongue fell on him," said Essec. "Religious
were my gifts."

"Iss, indeed, the brother of the male husband."

"Now you can afford nine of pounds for the place. Rich he is and richer
he will be. Pounds without number he has."

Madlen made a record of Essec's scheme for Joseph; and she said also:
"Proud I'll be to shout that my son bach bought Penlan."

"Setting aside money am I," Joseph speedily answered.

Again ambition aroused him. "Footling is he that is content with
Zwanssee. Next half-holiday skurshon I'll crib in Cardiff."

Joseph gained his desire, and the chronicle of his doings he sent to his
mother. "Twenty-five, living-in, and spiffs on remnants are the wages,"
he said. "In the flannelette department I am and I have not been fined
once. Lot of English I hear, and we call ladies madam that the wedded
nor the unwedded are insulted. Boys harmless are the eight that sleep by
me. Examine Nuncle of the price of Penlan."

"I will wag my tongue craftily and slowly," Madlen vowed as she crossed
her brother-in-law's threshold.

"I Shire Pembroke la