The Rainbow

Now there were two babies, a woman came in to do the

housework. Anna was wholly nurse. Two babies were not too much

for her. But she hated any form of work, now her children had

come, except the charge of them.

When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy child,

always amusing herself, needing not much attention from other

people. At evening, towards six o'clock, Anna very often went

across the lane to the stile, lifted Ursula over into the field,

with a: "Go and meet Daddy." Then Brangwen, coming up the steep

round of the hill, would see before him on the brow of the path

a tiny, tottering, windblown little mite with a dark head, who,

as soon as she saw him, would come running in tiny, wild,

windmill fashion, lifting her arms up and down to him, down the

steep hill. His heart leapt up, he ran his fastest to her, to

catch her, because he knew she would fall. She came fluttering

on, wildly, with her little limbs flying. And he was glad when

he caught her up in his arms. Once she fell as she came flying

to him, he saw her pitch forward suddenly as she was running

with her hands lifted to him; and when he picked her up, her

mouth was bleeding. He could never bear to think of it, he

always wanted to cry, even when he was an old man and she had

become a stranger to him. How he loved that little

Ursula!--his heart had been sharply seared for her, when he

was a youth, first married.

When she was a little older, he would see her recklessly

climbing over the bars of the stile, in her red pinafore,

swinging in peril and tumbling over, picking herself up and

flitting towards him. Sometimes she liked to ride on his

shoulder, sometimes she preferred to walk with his hand,

sometimes she would fling her arms round his legs for a moment,

then race free again, whilst he went shouting and calling to

her, a child along with her. He was still only a tall, thin,

unsettled lad of twenty-two.

It was he who had made her her cradle, her little chair, her

little stool, her high chair. It was he who would swing her up

to table or who would make for her a doll out of an old

table-leg, whilst she watched him, saying: "Make her eyes, Daddy, make her eyes!"

And he made her eyes with his knife.

She was very fond of adorning herself, so he would tie a

piece of cotton round her ear, and hang a blue bead on it

underneath for an ear-ring. The ear-rings varied with a red

bead, and a golden bead, and a little pearl bead. And as he came

home at night, seeing her bridling and looking very

self-conscious, he took notice and said: "So you're wearing your best golden and pearl ear-rings,

to-day?"