My Neighbors | Page 3

which were on his bed, and
three earthen bottles which held heated water were put in his bed; and
yet the old man got no warmth.
"I'll manage now alone," said Lisbeth on the Saturday morning. "You'll
have Jennie and her young gentleman home for Sunday. Should he turn
for the worse I'll send for you."
Olwen left, and in the afternoon came Jennie and Charlie from the
drapery shop in which they were engaged; and sighing and sobbing she
related to them her father's will.
"If I was you, ma," Jennie counseled, "I wouldn't leave him too much
alone with Aunt Liz. You never can tell. Funny things may happen."
"I'd trust Aunt Liz anywhere," Olwen declared, loath to have her sister
charged with unfaithfulness.
"What do you think, Charlie?" asked Jennie.
The young man stiffened his slender body and inclined his pale face
and rubbed his nape, and he proclaimed that there was no discourse of
which the meaning was hidden from him and no device with which he
was not familiar; and he answered: "I would stick on the spot."
That night Olwen made her customary address to God, and before she

came up from her knees or uncovered her eyes, she extolled to God the
acts of her father Adam. But slumber kept from her because of that
which Jennie had spoken; and diffiding the humor of her heart, she said
to herself: "Liz must have a chance of going on with some work." At
that she slept; and early in the day she was in Cartref.
"Jennie and Charlie insist you rest," she told Lisbeth. "She can manage
quite nicely, and there's Charlie which is a help. So should any one who
is twenty-three."
For a week the daughters waited on their father and contrived they
never so wittily to free him from his disorder--Did they not strip and
press against him?--they could not deliver him from the wind of dead
men's feet. They stitched black cloth into garments and while they
stitched they mumbled the doleful hymns of Sion. Two yellow plates
were fixed on Adam's coffin--this was in accordance with the man's
request--and the engraving on one was in the Welsh tongue, and on the
other in the English tongue, and the reason was this: that the angel who
lifts the lid--be he of the English or of the Welsh--shall know
immediately that the dead is of the people chosen to have the first seats
in the Mansion.
The sisters removed from Cartref such things as pleased them; Lisbeth
chose more than Olwen, for her house was bare; and in the choosing
each gave in to the other, and neither harbored a mean thought.
With her chattels and her sewing machine, Lisbeth entered number
seven, which is in Park Villas, and separated from the railway by a
wood paling, and from then on the sisters lived by the rare fruits of
their joint industry; and never, except on the Sabbath, did they shed
their thimbles or the narrow bright scissors which hung from their
waists. Some of the poor middle-class folk near-by brought to them
their measures of materials, and the more honorable folk who dwelt in
the avenues beyond Upper Richmond Road crossed the steep railway
bridge with blouses and skirts to be reformed.
"We might be selling Cartref now," said Olwen presently.

"I leave it to you," Lisbeth remarked.
"And I leave it to you. It's as much yours as mine."
"Suppose we consult Charlie?"
"He's a man, and he'll do the best he can."
"Yes, he's very cute is Charlie."
Charlie gave an ear unto Olwen, and he replied: "You been done in. It's
disgraceful how's she's took everything that were best."
"She had nothing to go on with," said Olwen. "And it will come back.
It will be all Jennie's."
"What guarantee have you of that? That's my question. What
guarantee?"
Olwen was silent. She was not wishful of disparaging her sister or of
squabbling with Charlie.
"Well," said Charlie, "I must have an entirely free hand. Give it an
agent if you prefer. They're a lively lot."
He went about over-praising Cartref. "With the sticks and they're not
rubbish," he swore, "it's worth five hundred. Three-fifty will buy the
lot."
A certain man said to him: "I'll give you two-twenty"; and Charlie
replied: "Nothing doing."
Twelve months he was in selling the house, and for the damage which
in the meanseason had been done to it by a bomb and by fire and water
the sum of money that he received was one hundred and fifty pounds.
Lisbeth had her share, and Olwen had her share, and each applauded
Charlie, Lisbeth assuring him: "You'll never regret it"; and this is how
Charlie applauded himself: "No one else could have got