"Wasn't it a dainty dish to set before a king?" cried Anna,
her eyes flashing with joy as she uttered the cryptic words,
looking at Brangwen for confirmation. He sat down with the baby,
saying loudly: "Sing up, my lad, sing up."
And the baby cried loudly, and Anna shouted lustily, dancing
in wild bliss: "Sing a song of sixpence
Pocketful of posies,
Ascha! Ascha!----"
Then she stopped suddenly in silence and looked at Brangwen
again, her eyes flashing, as she shouted loudly and
delightedly: "I've got it wrong, I've got it wrong."
"Oh, my sirs," said Tilly entering, "what a racket!"
Brangwen hushed the child and Anna flipped and danced on. She
loved her wild bursts of rowdiness with her father. Tilly hated
it, Mrs. Brangwen did not mind.
Anna did not care much for other children. She domineered
them, she treated them as if they were extremely young and
incapable, to her they were little people, they were not her
equals. So she was mostly alone, flying round the farm,
entertaining the farm-hands and Tilly and the servant-girl,
whirring on and never ceasing.
She loved driving with Brangwen in the trap. Then, sitting
high up and bowling along, her passion for eminence and
dominance was satisfied. She was like a little savage in her
arrogance. She thought her father important, she was installed
beside him on high. And they spanked along, beside the high,
flourishing hedge-tops, surveying the activity of the
countryside. When people shouted a greeting to him from the road
below, and Brangwen shouted jovially back, her little voice was
soon heard shrilling along with his, followed by her chuckling
laugh, when she looked up at her father with bright eyes, and
they laughed at each other. And soon it was the custom for the
passerby to sing out: "How are ter, Tom? Well, my lady!" or
else, "Mornin', Tom, mornin', my Lass!" or else, "You're off
together then?" or else, "You're lookin' rarely, you two."
Anna would respond, with her father: "How are you, John!
Good mornin', William! Ay, makin' for Derby," shrilling
as loudly as she could. Though often, in response to "You're off
out a bit then," she would reply, "Yes, we are," to the great
joy of all. She did not like the people who saluted him and did
not salute her.
She went into the public-house with him, if he had to call,
and often sat beside him in the bar-parlour as he drank his beer
or brandy. The landladies paid court to her, in the obsequious
way landladies have.
"Well, little lady, an' what's your name?"
"Anna Brangwen," came the immediate, haughty answer.
"Indeed it is! An' do you like driving in a trap with your
father?"
"Yes," said Anna, shy, but bored by these inanities. She had
a touch-me-not way of blighting the inane inquiries of grown-up
people.