'
'And how is that, Winnie?' I said, as she adjusted my crutches for
me.
'After I've said "Amen," I always say, "And, dear Lord Jesus, don't
forget to love dear Henry, who can't get up the gangways without me,"
and I will say that every night as long as I live.'
From that morning I considered her altogether mine. Her speaking of
me as the 'dear little English boy,' however, as she did, marred the
delight her words gave me. I had from the first observed that the
child's strongest passion was a patriotism of a somewhat fiery kind.
The word English in her mouth seemed some-times a word of reproach:
it was the name of the race that in the past had invaded her sacred
Snowdonia.
I afterwards learnt that her aunt was answerable for this senseless
prejudice.
'Winnie,' I said, 'don't you wish I was a Welsh boy?'
'Oh yes,' she said.'Don't you?' I made no answer.
She looked into my face and said, 'And yet I don't think I could love
a Welsh boy as I love you.'
She then repeated to me a verse of a Welsh song, which of course I
did not understand a word of until she told me what it meant in
English.
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