FullReads

Then Joseph turned, and carrying his yellow tin box, he climbed into the craggy moorland path which takes you to the tramping road. By the pump of Tavarn Ffos he rested until Shim Carrier came thereby; and while Shim’s horse drank of barley water, Joseph stepped into the wagon; and at the end of the passage Shim showed him the business of getting a ticket and that of going into and coming down from a railway carriage.

In that manner did Joseph go to the drapery shop of Rees Jones in Carmarthen; and at the beginning he was instructed in the keeping and the selling of such wares as reels of cotton, needles, pins, bootlaces, mending wool, buttons, and such like–all those things which together are known as haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: “Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what nobody wants.”

The first year passed happily, and the second year; and in the third Joseph was stirred to go forward.

“What use to stop here all the life?” he asked himself. “Better to go off.”

He put his belongings in his box and went to Swansea.

“Very busy emporium I am in,” were the words he sent to Madlen. “And the wage is twenty pounds.”

Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: “Ten acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?” She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to the Respected.

“Pounds without number he is earning,” she cried. “Rich he’ll be. Swells are youths shop.”

“Gifts from the tip of my tongue fell on him,” said Essec. “Religious were my gifts.”

“Iss, indeed, the brother of the male husband.”

“Now you can afford nine of pounds for the place. Rich he is and richer he will be. Pounds without number he has.”

Madlen made a record of Essec’s scheme for Joseph; and she said also: “Proud I’ll be to shout that my son bach bought Penlan.”

“Setting aside money am I,” Joseph speedily answered.

Again ambition aroused him. “Footling is he that is content with Zwanssee. Next half-holiday skurshon I’ll crib in Cardiff.”

Joseph gained his desire, and the chronicle of his doings he sent to his mother. “Twenty-five, living-in, and spiffs on remnants are the wages,” he said. “In the flannelette department I am and I have not been fined once. Lot of English I hear, and we call ladies madam that the wedded nor the unwedded are insulted. Boys harmless are the eight that sleep by me. Examine Nuncle of the price of Penlan.”

“I will wag my tongue craftily and slowly,” Madlen vowed as she crossed her brother-in-law’s threshold.

“I Shire Pembroke land is cheap,” she said darkly.

“Look you for a farm there,” said Essec. “Pelted with offers am I for Penlan. Ninety I shall have. Poverty makes me sell very soon.”

“As he says.”

“Pretty tight is Joseph not to buy her. No care has he for his mam.”

“Stiffish are affairs with him, poor dab.”

Madlen reported to Joseph that which Essec had said, and she added: “Awful to leave the land of your father. And auction the cows. Even the red cow that is a champion for milk. Where shall I go? The House of the Poor. Horrid that your mam must go to the House of the Poor.”

Joseph sat on his bed, writing: “Taken ten pounds from the post I have which leaves three shillings. Give Nuncle the ten as earnest of my intention.”