hat you will milk my
cow."

Sara turned her seeing eye upon Mali. "An old woman very mad you are to
go two nines of miles."

"Milk you my cow," said Mali. "And milk you her dry. Butter from me the
widow fach shall have. And give ladlings of the hogshead to my pigs and
scatter food for my hens."

She tore a baston from a tree, trimmed it and blackened it with
blacking, and at noon she set forth to the house of her
daughter-in-law; and she carried in a basket butter, two dead fowls,
potatoes, carrots, and a white-hearted cabbage, and she came to Josi's
house in the darkness which is in the morning, and it was so that she
rested on the threshold; and in the bright light Mary Ann opened the
door, and was astonished. "Mam-in-law," she said, "there's nasty for you
to come like this. Speak what you want. Sitting there is not
respectable. You are like an old woman from the country."

"Come am I to sorrow," answered Mali. "Boy all grand was Josi bach. Look
at him now will I."

"Talking no sense you are," said Mary Ann. "Why you do not see that the
house is full of muster? Will there not be many Respecteds at the
funeral?"

"Much preaching shall I say?"

"Indeed, iss. But haste about now and help to prepare food to eat. Slow
you are, female."

Presently mourners came to the house, and when each had walked up and
gazed upon the features of the dead, and when the singers had sung and
the Respecteds had spoken, and while a carpenter turned screws into the
coffin, Mary Ann said to Mali: "Clear you the dishes now, and cut bread
and spread butter for those who will return after the funeral. After all
have been served go you home to Pencoch." She drew a veil over her face
and fell to weeping as she followed the six men who carried Josi's
coffin to the hearse.

Having finished, Mali took her baston and her empty basket and began her
journey. As she passed over Towy Street--the public way which is set
with stones--she saw that many people were gathered at the gates of
Beulah to witness Mary Ann's loud lamentations at Josi's grave.

Mali stayed a little time; then she went on, for the light was dimming.
At the hour she reached Pencoch the mown hay was dry and the people were
gathering it together. She cried outside the house of Sara Eye Glass:
"Large thanks, Sara fach. Home am I, and like pouring water were the
tears. And there's preaching." She milked her cows and fed her pigs and
her fowls, and then she stepped up to her be