enormous correspondence.  Mr. Bertie Adams seemed a nice young man, though also afflicted at times with something that gave melancholy to his gaze.  But he had a good little wife who came to make a home for him in Marylebone.  Mrs. Rossiter being a kindly woman went to call on her and was entirely taken up with their one child whom she frequently asked to tea and found much more interesting than the new Pom.  “But it’s got such a funny name, Michael; I mean funny for their station in life.  It’s a girl and they call it ‘Vivvy,’ which is short for Vivien.  I told Mrs. Adams she must have been reading Tennyson’s Idylls of the King; but she said ’No, she wasn’t much of a reader:  Adams was, and it was some lady’s name in a story that had stuck in his head, and that as her mother’s name was Susan and his was Jane, she hadn’t minded.’”

CHAPTER XI

DAVID GOES ABROAD

David Williams had an enthusiastic greeting when he went home to Pontystrad for the Easter of 1909.  It was an early Easter that year, whether you like it or not; it suits my story better so, because then David can turn up in Brussels at the end of April, and yet have attended to a host of necessary things before his departure on a long absence.

He first of all devoted himself to making the old Vicar happy for a few weeks in a rather blustery, showery March-April.  His father was full of wonderment and exultation over the honourable publicity his barrister son had attained.  “You’ll be a Judge, Davy; at any rate a K.C., before I’m dead!  But marry, boy, marry. That’s what you must do now.  Marry and give me grandchildren.”  The burly curate privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to the Woman’s Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot.  He had worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life.  If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention.  However, he kept most of these thoughts to himself and his wife, the squire’s daughter; who as she somehow thought David ought to have married her, was a little bit sentimental about him and considered he was a Galahad.

Old Nannie remained as usual wistfully puzzled, half fearing the explanation of the enigma if it ever came.