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rather less notion than myself about the running of a house, but I had taken a liking to her in the autumn, and I had hoped that she might get better with practice. It was an extravagant hope, as I should have known from the visits I paid her: her place was spick and span outside (she was a great gardener) but the interior, as much as could be seen of it in the gloom, was a congestion of huge vases, rococo furniture and tin trunks ajar. Most of these objects still had their lot numbers: the old lady had a passion for auctions, and attended every sale within twenty miles. She knew the mountain paths like a shepherd, and she could be seen in the wild desolation of the Diffwys creeping along bowed under a crimson pouffe or even, as I found her once, recruiting her strength on an Empire buffet, poised on the black crag above the silent, menacing Llyn Du.
    She was quite well off, with pensions for her two men who had been killed in the quarry. It was surprising to hear that she had been married; I had supposed her to be one of those strong-minded, masculine women who do not marry but live alone, self-contained and formidable, to the end of their days. Her needs were few; twenty pounds would probably have covered her yearly expenditure apart from the auctions, and people gave her things, mutton and pork after a slaughtering, black pudding, corn for her hens. In the season she went to every farm for the shearing, where she was an expert roller of fleeces. She worked hard when she chose to work, but it was more from habit than from interest in the wages, and to satisfy her curiosity and her need for conversation. I know it was not for money that she threaded the mountains at shearing time, because she always took a fleece as her day’s pay, as they used to do in former times; but instead of having it made into flannel as the old people did she stored the wool in her loft, where it mounted and mounted, the home of innumerable rats and mice. Moldering wool was the chief of the smells in her cottage; the next in strength was her goat, her companion and pet.
    The first time I went to ask why she had not come she gave me a cup of tea with her goat’s milk in it; even in that dim light I could see the encrusted grime on the mug. There was something soft at the bottom, which my spoon encountered but did not entirely dislodge.
    It was conversation that proved the downfall of our relation; that and wounded pride. She was the most garrulous old woman I have ever heard. She knew very little English, but that did not prevent her from starting to talk as soon as she opened my door, a flood of words that did not stop until she closed the door behind her. As far as I could make out they were mostly anecdotes of her young days, or the history of families living in the valley, diseases, catastrophe, anger and death. It was impossible to follow her. Most of the farming people had some trouble with English pronouns (hi in Welsh is she in English, which starts them off on the wrong foot) but none was so wild as this old lady.
    I used to listen with strained attention to such phrases as “Then it went off with the hwnna [this took the place of any unknown English word] with Dai to the sheeps; and tomorning I say ‘Men: the damned things.’” It was a pity that I could not understand her, for I am sure she would have been most interesting: I tried, but the difficulty of language was far from being the greatest barrier. Her mental processes were tortuous and involved; she was the victim of association. She would plunge into a vast series of parentheses and never come out. An account of Criccieth fair thirty years ago would become the history of Mr. Williams, Moelgwyn, and then by some fresh association, dark to me, it would turn to a tale of obscure injustice.
    In the end I stopped trying, and she resented it. Once, during an inordinately tedious speech I got up at the end of a paragraph, hoping to be allowed to get on with the book that lay open on