BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 151 



By the time that I had emptied some of it from 

 my gloves, and rough-dried the saddle and Tommy 

 with a wisp of grass, Miss O'Flannigan had re- 

 turned, minus the gingham, and with girlishly 

 floating hair. Our subsequent entry into Bettwys 

 was mercifully cloaked by deluge, but it was diffi- 

 cult to bear with dignity the successive eyes of a 

 walking party, trudging in single file away from it — 

 the same walking party on whom we had bestowed 

 a scornful compassion as we met them in the air- 

 less heat near Beddgelert. Even on such a day as 

 this the villas and lodging-houses of Bettwys could 

 look nothing else but flawlessly clean and smart, 

 with their clear grey-stone walls and white-frilled 

 window curtains. Between them and the speeding 

 river (whose bridge and island were, even at a 

 glance, familiar as the mainstay of many water- 

 colour exhibitions) we huddled in downpour to the 

 hotel of our choice ; not the Royal Oak, with its 

 legion of waiters and its private road to the rail- 

 way station, but to the more sympathetic Glan 

 Aber, where the windows were innocent of the 



