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.