Design for my grandfather’s tomb. Death and interment of Mrs. Emily Smith and the aunt that had stood with my mother’s mother at the bottom of the stairs. Effect upon my father’s health. Alexander Carkeek and his sons. Arrival home from the Stools. First tidings of the new lectern. My father’s interview with the vicar. Curious instance of transposition of consonants. My father rehearses his denunciation. Arrival of Simeon Whey. My father repeats his denunciation. PERMANENTLY impaired as had been my father’s health by the ordeal referred to in Chapter VIII he had not permitted this, as I have said, to interfere with his duties as a sidesman; and there were still occasions upon which he would exhibit all his old-time fire and determination. Thus when my mother’s parents had been destroyed by a tram accident about a month after the decease of Silas Whey, it was he who had arranged the funeral, chosen the hymns, and designed the monument by which they were to be commemorated. The provision business having declined somewhat, the chief factor in the design had necessarily been one of economy, and my father had therefore confined himself to a broken column some three inches in diameter and a foot high. Insufficient to accommodate their full names, their initials had been tastefully engraved upon it, the surface of the grave being sprinkled with flints that would require no subsequent upkeep. In conjunction with Mr. Balfour Whey too, it was he who had selected a house for my mother’s eight sisters, small but sufficient and in a remote part of Wales, where they would be able to husband their meagre income. Bitterly opposed as the eight sisters had been both to living together and leaving Walworth, my father had overcome them by the sheer power of his torrential eloquence and personality. Surrounded by strangers, as he had irresistibly reminded them, most of whom were unacquainted with the English language, fifteen miles from a railway station and three and a half from the nearest village, they would have neither the occasion nor the opportunity to dissipate their substance in convivial extravagance, while the precipitous roads, by which alone the house that he had chosen for them could be approached, would give them an appetite for the extremely simple fare which would be all that their means would allow them to purchase. To Wales they had gone, therefore, and though he continued to receive letters from them, couched in terms of the basest ingratitude, he neither replied to these nor permitted them to modify his kindly consideration for my mother.