He shook his head gravely and said, ’No, my dear; your mother would never allow it.’

‘Why not?’ I said; ‘is painting low too?’

’Cyril Aylwin is low, at least so your mother and aunt say, especially your aunt.  I have not perceived it myself, but then your mother’s perceptive faculties are extraordinary—­quite extraordinary.’

‘Did the lowness come from his being a painter, father?’ I asked.

’Really, child, you are puzzling me.  But I have observed you now for some weeks, and I quite believe that you would make one of the best rubbers who ever held a ball.  I am going to Salisbury next week, and you shall then make your debut.’

This was in the midst of a very severe winter we had some years ago, when all Europe was under a coating of ice.

‘But, father,’ I said, ‘shan’t we find it rather cold?’

‘Well,’ said my father, with a bland smile, ’I will not pretend that Salisbury Cathedral is particularly warm in this weather, but in winter I always rub in knee-caps and mittens.  I will tell Hodder to knit you a full set at once.’

‘But, father,’ I said, ’Tom Wynne tells me that rubbing is the most painful of all occupations.  He even goes so far sometimes as to say that it was the exhaustion of rubbing for you which turned him to drink.’

‘Nothing of the kind,’ said my father.  ’All that Tom needed to make him a good rubber was enthusiasm.  I am strongly of opinion that without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome, except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the thighs, the most numbing for the fingers.  It is a profession, Henry, demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator.  Now Tom’s enthusiasm for rubbing as an art was from the first exceedingly feeble.’

I was on the eve of revolting, but I remembered what there was lacerating his poor breast, and consented.  And when I heard hints of our ‘working the Welsh churches’ my sudden enthusiasm for the rubber’s art astonished even my father.

‘My dear,’ he said to my mother at dinner one day, ’what do you think?  Henry has developed quite a sudden passion for rubbing.’

I saw an expression of perplexity and mystification overspread my mother’s sagacious face.

‘And in the spring,’ continued my father, ’we are going into Wales to rub.’

‘Into Wales, are you?’ said my mother, in a tone of that soft voice whose meaning I knew so well.

My thoughts were continually upon Winifred, now that I was alone in the familiar spots.  I had never seen her nor heard from her since we parted as children.  She had only known me as a cripple.  What would she think of me now?  Did she ever think of me?  She had not answered my childish letter, and this had caused me much sorrow and perplexity.

We did not go into Wales after all.  But the result of this conversation took a shape that amazed me.  I was sent to stay with my Aunt Prue in London in order that I might attend one of the Schools of Art.  Yes, my mother thought it was better for me even to run the risk of becoming bohemianised like Cyril Aylwin, than to brood over Winnie or the scenes that were associated with our happy childhood.