Now there were two babies, a woman came in to do the
housework. Anna was wholly nurse. Two babies were not too much
for her. But she hated any form of work, now her children had
come, except the charge of them.
When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy child,
always amusing herself, needing not much attention from other
people. At evening, towards six o'clock, Anna very often went
across the lane to the stile, lifted Ursula over into the field,
with a: "Go and meet Daddy." Then Brangwen, coming up the steep
round of the hill, would see before him on the brow of the path
a tiny, tottering, windblown little mite with a dark head, who,
as soon as she saw him, would come running in tiny, wild,
windmill fashion, lifting her arms up and down to him, down the
steep hill. His heart leapt up, he ran his fastest to her, to
catch her, because he knew she would fall. She came fluttering
on, wildly, with her little limbs flying. And he was glad when
he caught her up in his arms. Once she fell as she came flying
to him, he saw her pitch forward suddenly as she was running
with her hands lifted to him; and when he picked her up, her
mouth was bleeding. He could never bear to think of it, he
always wanted to cry, even when he was an old man and she had
become a stranger to him. How he loved that little
Ursula!--his heart had been sharply seared for her, when he
was a youth, first married.
When she was a little older, he would see her recklessly
climbing over the bars of the stile, in her red pinafore,
swinging in peril and tumbling over, picking herself up and
flitting towards him. Sometimes she liked to ride on his
shoulder, sometimes she preferred to walk with his hand,
sometimes she would fling her arms round his legs for a moment,
then race free again, whilst he went shouting and calling to
her, a child along with her. He was still only a tall, thin,
unsettled lad of twenty-two.
It was he who had made her her cradle, her little chair, her
little stool, her high chair. It was he who would swing her up
to table or who would make for her a doll out of an old
table-leg, whilst she watched him, saying: "Make her eyes, Daddy, make her eyes!"
And he made her eyes with his knife.
She was very fond of adorning herself, so he would tie a
piece of cotton round her ear, and hang a blue bead on it
underneath for an ear-ring. The ear-rings varied with a red
bead, and a golden bead, and a little pearl bead. And as he came
home at night, seeing her bridling and looking very
self-conscious, he took notice and said: "So you're wearing your best golden and pearl ear-rings,
to-day?"