“I worked on quietly for years, never wasting a penny or an hour. Don’t take it for virtue in me. It wasn’t that. It was just that the old doctor’s influence on me had been sound and I couldn’t afford to do otherwise. As a matter of fact I suppose there must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young men in that city in exactly the same situation. Only I didn’t know one of them. I was lonely . . . absolutely solitary. I never heard an accent of my own country’s speech. I never saw a patch of real green or a sky that hadn’t smoke in it. I made my friends in books: not the kind of books that you’ve been brought up on—I hadn’t time for poetry or frills of that kind: books of solid facts: knowledge for the sake of knowledge. You see all the things that you would take for granted, having known them as a birthright, so to speak, were new and unknown to me. One book was a sort of gospel to me. It was called _Self Help_, written by a man named Smiles. “So when you hear of a self-made man it may mot mean much; but a self-educated man, I can tell you, means a good deal. In the end, of course, I gradually came within sight of my ambition. From a van-driver to a firm of wholesale chemists I became an assistant, an apprentice in their retail house. I took my examinations. I qualified as a dispensing chemist. Later, by a curious piece of chance, I met your mother. We became friends. She was the first person in whom I had confided since I left Mendip. She seemed to understand. It was a strange thing for me, after all those years, to be able to talk about myself. I can’t tell you what a wonderful relief it was. And then we found that we loved one another and married. We went out into the country near North Bromwich to find a village to make a home in, and we came across Halesby. The place was very different from what it is now twenty years ago. We were very happy. No. . . . I won’t talk about it. But you can see now, that behind your life there were quite a lot of complicated things that don’t appear on the surface. It’s really better that you should know them.” “It makes me love you, father,” said Edwin. “Because, of course, it is all so wonderful. I expect if I had been you I should still have been in Axcombe. I don’t think I could have done what you did.” “You might have done a great deal more. There’s no knowing what’s in us until we are tried. That sounds like Samuel Smiles; but it’s quite true. At any rate it’s time we were asleep, boy. I think the rain has stopped.”