plainly that if she ever made such a claim again I should go to the police.  You should have heard Bridget defending you! Such a champion.  If you want a witness to character for your references you should call her!  She is loud in your praise.

October 22.

There is one thing I want to tell you; and it is easier to write it than say it.  Your mother did not die when you were three years old—­much worse:  she left me—­ran away with an engineer who was tracing out the branch railway.  He seemed a nice young fellow and I had him often up at the Vicarage, and that was the way he repaid my hospitality!  He wrote to me a year afterwards asking me to divorce her.  As though a Clergyman of the Church of England could do such a thing!  I had offered to take her back—­not then—­it would have been a mockery—­but by putting advertisements into the South Wales papers.  But after her paramour’s letter—­which I did not answer—­I never heard any more about her....

["Damn it all,” said David to himself at this juncture of the letter—­he was training himself to swear in a moderate, gentlemanly way—­“Damn it all!  Whatever I do, it seems I cannot come from altogether respectable stock."...]

You grew up therefore without a mother’s care, though good Bridget did her best.  When you were a child I fear I rather neglected you.  I was so disappointed and embittered that I sought consolation in the legends of our beloved country and in Scriptural exegesis.  You were rather a naughty boy at Swansea Grammar School and somewhat of a scamp at Malvern College—­Well! we won’t go over all that again.  I quite understand your reticence about the past.  Once again I think the blame was mine as much as yours.  I ought to have interested myself more in your pursuits and games ... what a pity, by the bye, that you seem to have lost your gift of drawing and painting!  I do remember how at one time we were drawn together over the old Welsh legends and the very clever drawings you made of national heroes and heroines—­they seemed to come on you as quite a surprise when I took them out of the old portfolio.

But about your mother—­for it is necessary you should know all I can tell you in case you have to answer questions as to your parentage.  Your mother’s name was, as you know, Mary Vavasour.  It is a common name in South Wales though it seems to be Norman French.  She came to our Pontystrad school as a teacher in 1873.  Her father was something to do with mining at Merthyr.  I fell in love with her—­she had a sweet face—­and married her in 1874.  You were born two years afterwards.  Bridget had been my housekeeper before I was married and I asked her to stay on lest your mother should be inexperienced at first in the domestic arts.  They never got on well together and when Mary had recovered from her confinement and seemed disposed to take up housekeeping I sent away poor Bridget reluctantly and only took her back after your mother’s flight.  Bridget was a second mother to you as you know, though I fear you never showed her much affection till these later days.

October 23.