My eyes seem to be improving instead of getting tired with the new delights of reading and writing.  I owe all this to you and to the clever oculist at Clifton.  Dr. Murgatroyd from Pontyffynon looked in here the other day, to ask about your return.  He seemed almost to grudge me my restored sight because I had got it from other people’s advice.  Said he could have advised an operation only he never believed my heart would stand it.  When I told him they had mixed the anaesthetic with oxygen he became quite angry—­and exclaimed against these new-fangled notions.  But I must not use up my new found energy writing about him.  I want to finish my letter in a business-like fashion so that you may know all that is necessary to be known about yourself and your position.  You may have at any moment to answer questions before you get called to the Bar, and with your defective memory—­I am glad to hear things in the past are becoming clearer to you—­I am sure with God’s grace you will wholly recover soon from the effects of your wound and your illness—­What was I writing?  I meant to say that you ought to know the main facts about your family and your position.

I was an only son.  Your grandfather was a prosperous farmer and auctioneer.  You have distant cousins, Vaughans and Williamses, and some others living at Shrewsbury named Price.  I have written to none of them about your return because they never evinced any interest in me or my concerns.  Your mother’s people, her Vavasour relations at Cardiff—­did not seem to me to be very respectable, though her father was a well-educated man for his position.  He died—­I heard—­in a mine accident.

I am not poorly off for a Welsh clergyman.  My mother—­a Price of Ystrwy—­wanted me to go into the Church and prevailed on your grandfather to send me first to Malvern and next to Cambridge.  It was at Cambridge that I met your comrade’s father—­Sam Gardner, I mean.  He was rather wild in his college days and to tell you the truth, I never cared to keep up with him much—­he had such very rowdy friends.  My mother died while I was at Cambridge and in his later years your grandfather married again—­his housekeeper—­and rather muddled his affairs, because at one time he was quite well off.

After I was ordained he purchased for me the advowson of this living.  All that came to me from his estate, however, was a sum of about eleven thousand pounds.  This used to bring me in about five hundred pounds a year, and in addition to that was the fluctuating two hundred and fifty pounds income from my benefice.  I took about three thousand pounds out of my capital to pay the debts you ran up, to article you to Mr. Praed; and, I must admit, to get my “Tales from Taliessin” and “Legends of the Welsh Saints” privately printed at Cardiff.  I am afraid I wasted much good money on the desire to see my Cymraeg studies in print.