240 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



presently struck up a livelier strain, when two "Welsh 

 girls, who were chatting before the grate, one of them 

 as dumpy as a bag of meal, and the other slender and 

 tall, stepped into the middle of the floor and began to 

 dance to the delicious music, a Welsh mechanic and 

 myself drinking our ale and looking on approvingly. 

 After a while the pleasant, modest-looking bar-maid, 

 whom I had seen behind the beer levers as I entered, 

 came in, and, after looking on for a moment, was 

 persuaded to lay down her sewing and join in the 

 dance. Then there came in a sandy-haired Welsh- 

 man, who could speak and understand only his native 

 dialect, and finding his neighbors affiliating with an 

 Englishman, as he supposed, and trying to speak the 

 hateful tongue, proceeded to berate them sharply (for 

 it appears the Welsh are still jealous of the English) ; 

 but when they explained to him that I was not an 

 Englishman, but an American, and had already twice 

 stood the beer all around (at an outlay of sixpence), 

 he subsided into a sulky silence and regarded me in- 

 tently. 



About eleven o'clock a policeman paused at the 

 door and intimated that it was time the house was 

 shut up and the music stopped, and to outward ap- 

 pearances bis friendly warning was complied with ; 

 but the harp still discoursed in a minor key, and a 

 light tripping and shuffling of responsive feet might 

 occasionally have been heard for an hour later. 

 When I arose to go it was with a feeling of regret 

 that I could not see more of this simple and social 



