"Poor Gethin! how could I have him at my wedding?
I never thought one of our family could be dishonest." "Nor I--nor I, indeed!" said Ebben Owens, shaking his head sorrowfully.
"It is too plain, isn't it ?" said Ann, "going away like that--oh! to think our Gethin was a thief!" and throwing her apron over her face she burst into a fit of sobbing, a thing so unusual with the placid Ann that her father and Gwilym both watched her in surprise.
Gwilym took her hand in silence, and the old man, leaning his elbow on the table and shading his eyes with his hand dropped some bitter tears.
He had looked forward to Will's return with intense longing, had counted the days that must elapse before that happy hour should arrive when, great-coated and gloved, he should drive his son over the frosty roads, and usher him like a conquering hero into the old home.

Through her own tears Ann observed the old man's sorrowful attitude, and instantly she dried her eyes and ran towards him.
"Father, anwl," she said, in an abandon of love, kneeling down beside him, and throwing her strong white arm around him, "is it tears I see dropping down on the table?
Well, indeed, there's a foolish daughter you've got, to cry and mourn, and make her old father cry.

Stop those tears at once, then, naughty boy," she said cheerily, patting the old man's back; "or I'll cry again, and Gwilym will be afraid to enter such a showery family." Her father tried to laugh through his tears, and Ann, casting her sorrow to the winds, laid herself out with "merry quips and cranks" to restore him to cheerfulness.
"Now see," she cried, with assumed childish glee, "what a dinner I have for you! what you've often called 'a dinner for a king' and so it is, and that king is Ebben Owens of Garthowen!" and she placed before him a plate of boiled rabbit, adding a slice of the pink, home-cured bacon, which Gwilym was cutting with a smile of amusement at her playful ruse.
"Now, potatoes and onion sauce, salt, cabbages, knife and fork, and now the dear old king is going to eat a good dinner." Ebben Owens laughingly took his knife and fork, and in spite of the previous tears, the meal was a cheerful one, even Tudor stood up with his paws on the table with a joyous bark.
Will's letters were the grand excitement of the farm, coming at first pretty regularly once a week--read aloud by Ann in the best kitchen, examined carefully by her father lest a word should have escaped the reader, carried out to farm kitchen or stable or field, and read to the servants, who listened with gaping admiration.
"There's a scholar he is! Caton pawb! Indeed, Mishteer, there's proud you must be of him!" And all this was incense to Ebben Owens's heart..