"You're leaving Llanyglo? Well, holidays must come to an end.—You'd like another walk up the Trwyn? Very well; but you've seen all there is to see....

"Here we are.... What's going on at the Light? Oh, that's the Board of Trade, experimenting with some new fog apparatus or other. By the way, the Light people are rather sore because of a new Regulation, that they mustn't have lodgers at the farm; and also because they'd like to grow roses up the look-out wall, and that's prohibited too; I suppose the authorities think they'd be spending the day looking at the roses instead of at the ships. They've moved the rocket apparatus farther along the coast; they found it wasn't much use here, and it's turned out very successfully at Abercelyn.—Eh? Yes, where the manganese comes from. They still get a certain quantity, but there's peace in the Balkans or wherever it is for the moment, so nobody's growing very rich out of the mines here....

"Hallo, that's rather a coincidence. Don't look round too quickly. You see that tallish man over there? I don't suppose you've even seen him before; as a matter of fact he hasn't been—er—to be seen. He got into trouble once; in plain English, they put him in prison. His name's Armfield, and his trouble was all about Llanyglo. Awkward things, meetings like these. I think Armfield's a capital chap, and I should like to go and talk to him; but prison's a cruel thing, and you never know how the poor fellow himself feels about it.... Ah! As I thought, he looks rather broken. If you don't mind we won't watch him. Come on to the Dinas and have a smoke....

"How's John Willie Garden? Perfectly rosy, if beginning to get a bit fat. Lucky dog! Four children, two boys and two girls, quite an amiable chatter-box of a wife, and rich enough to buy almost anything he wants. Lucky, lucky dog!—Did I tell you he was the adopted Conservative Free Trade candidate for one of the Manchester divisions? Not that he cares a snap about Free Trade politically; economically it merely happens to be a good part of his bread and butter; but then you have to be careful about what you say on platforms, and so John Willie talks like the editor of the Spectator himself. June Garden runs her two houses, one here and one in Manchester, like clockwork, and they go backwards and forwards between them in a really regal car. Every tramp and gipsy on the road knows that car. However fast he's driving, John Willie always pulls up and gives them a shilling. Just a foible of his. We all have 'em in one shape or form.

"Llanyglo's going in heartily for these new proposals for advertising the town out of the rates. A young man called Ithel Williams is very keen on it; he's a son of Tudor Williams, the Tudor Williams who used to be M.P. for this division. Young Ithel's got rather a nice billet here, as Librarian or something for the Council, and if this new thing goes through he'll be quite in clover.—Jobbery? Well, I suppose that's the name for it, but personally I'm not altogether against it. It seems to me that the only alternative is putting these berths up for competitive examination, which in my opinion's failed all along the line, so find the right man and then job him in, I say.—The right man's so frequently a relative? Well ... there you are. That is the weak spot. But there's always a crab somewhere....

"I wonder if Armfield's gone yet? Let's have a look.... No, he's still there....

"A good season? Yes, from all accounts it's been a very good season. There have been better from the purely money point of view, I should say, but after all everybody can't be everything, and every place can't get all there is. Llanyglo, like other places, has its natural limits of expansion. I don't think it will get any bigger yet awhile. There's no doubt the Wakes people were the people who flung the money about, and they've a little fallen off; but even if Llanyglo has to write down some of its obligations it will probably gain in the long run. A section of the Council's coming to see that, and is pressing for reconstruction (that's always rather wonderful to me, that they should construct things of solid materials and then reconstruct them by saying they cost less than they did); but that's the Council's business, or rather the powers behind the Council. Edward Garden isn't one of these any longer, at any rate not to the extent he was. He sits in Manchester and makes towns in Canada now. But he still looks at letters under his glasses, and over them, and backwards and forwards and upside down, and then looks mildly up at you and says the letter seems to be a letter....

"A last look at the place: there you are: bay, Promenade, Pier, the ring of mountains behind. It grew from a few fishermen's huts to over-capitalisation in a very few years. And there's Terry Armfield, still looking at it all, like a not very old Rip Van Winkle. I wonder what he's thinking! I suppose he couldn't keep away, but must come and remember it as it was and dream over it again as it was never, never to be.... Walk past quickly; he's sobbing, poor chap. His dream was of a place—I don't know how to describe it—all friendliness and loveliness and graciousness, fowl and flesh and good red-herring all in one, so to speak, what you might call a diaphanous sort of place, a jolly place to think of during those few minutes of the morning or evening when you're not quite asleep and not quite awake, but—hm!—I'm not so sure ... not in this imperfect world....

"Anyway, that down there is what he sees....

"I suppose the other wouldn't have done....

"Shall we go?"

THE END

Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.