“No, it shall be tus,” he said. “Tus is better than tin.” Then his five sisters-in-law resumed the singing, from which the two fellow-members had been unable to desist, until my father, who had been rapidly thinking, once again held up his hand. “And I shall give the vicar,” he said, “the first opportunity of becoming Augustus’s godfather.” Then he took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, tilted his chin, and closed his eyes; and with the full vigour of his immense voice, he too joined in the doxology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II Trials of my infancy. Varieties of indigestion. I suffer from a local erythema. Instance of my father’s unselfishness. Difficulty in providing a second godfather. Unexpected solution of the problem. The ceremony of my baptism. A narrow escape. Was it culpable carelessness? My father transfers his worship to St. James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye. WITH the portion of my life that intervened between my birth and my baptism I do not propose, owing to exigencies of space, to deal in the fullest detail. But it may be of some comfort to weaker fellow-sufferers to be assured that, from the outset, the ill-health to which I have been a life-long martyr played its part in testing my character. Singularly well formed, of a sanguine complexion, and weighing not less than four and three-quarter pounds, Providence saw fit almost immediately to purge me without medicinal aid. Whether this was due, under Higher Supervision, as my father several times forcibly suggested to her, to some dietary excess or indiscretion on the part of my mother was never determined. But the fact remained that for several weeks I suffered from indigestion in two main directions. Twice indeed, on the grounds of health, the ceremony of my baptism had to be postponed; and for hours together, I have been told, I lay upon my back, with my knees drawn up and my fingers clenched, in an anguished endeavour to stifle the moans that I was too enfeebled wholly to suppress. Time after time, too, my mother’s mother, the aunt that had stood with her at the bottom of the stairs, and various of my mother’s sisters would recommend alternative forms of nourishment. But although, at my father’s desire, each of these suggestions was given an immediate trial, it was not for two months, and until I had been subjected to a heart-breaking period of starvation, that an affliction abated to which I have since been liable at any moment of undue excitement.