My Neighbors | Page 3

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 so much."
"The house and cash will be a nice egg-nest for Jennie," Olwen announced.
"And number seven and mine will make it more," added Lisbeth.
"It's a great comfort that she'll never want a roof over her," said Olwen.
Mindful of their vows to their father, the sisters lived at peace and held their peace in the presence of their prattling neighbors. On Sundays, togged in black gowns on which were