Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/176

 even Josiah’s mother was not more vain than Old Nanni. Hence Nanni struggled on less than three shillings and ninepence a week, for did she not give a tenth of her income to the treasury of the Capel? Unconsciously she came to regard Josiah as greater than God: God was abstract; Josiah was real.

As Josiah played a part in Nanni’s life, so did a Seller of Bibles play a minor part in the last few days of her travail. The man came to Nanni’s cottage the evening of the day of the rumour that the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan had received a call from a wealthy sister church in Aberystwyth. Broken with grief, Nanni, the first time for many years, bent her stiffened limbs and addressed herself to the living God. “Dear little Big Man,” she prayed, “let not your son bach religious depart.” Then she recalled how good God had been to her, how He had permitted her