David in previous letters, looking into his father's budget, had
shown him he could afford to keep a pony and a pony cart. This
therefore was waiting for him at the little station with the
gardener to drive. But in a week, David, already a good horseman,
had learnt to drive under the gardener's teaching, and then was able
to take his delighted father out for whole-day trips to revel in the
beauties of the scenery.
They would have with them a wicker basket containing an ample lunch
prepared by the generous hands of Bridget. They would stop at
some spot on a mountain pass; tether the pony, sit on a plaid
shawl thrown over a boulder, and feast their eyes on green
mountain-shoulders reared against the pale blue sky; or gaze across
ravines not unworthy of Switzerland. Or they would put up pony and
cart at some village inn, explore old battlemented churches and
churchyards with seventeenth and eighteenth century headstones, so
far more tasteful and seemly than the hideous death memorials of the
nineteenth century. And ever and again the old father, looking more
and more like a Druid, would recite that charming Spring song, the
104th Psalm; or fragments of Welsh poetry sounding very good in
Welsh--as no doubt Greek poetry does in properly pronounced Greek,
but being singularly bald and vague in its references to earth, sea,
sky and flora when translated into plain English.
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