ams had
of late been more frequent: the paradise of colour had been growing
richer and rarer.

He shook his head gravely and said, 'No, my dear; your mother would
never allow it.'

'Why not?' I said; 'is painting low too?'

'Cyril Aylwin is low, at least so your mother and aunt say, especially
your aunt. I have not perceived it myself, but then your mother's
perceptive faculties are extraordinary--quite extraordinary.'

'Did the lowness come from his being a painter, father?' I asked.

'Really, child, you are puzzling me. But I have observed you now for
some weeks, and I quite believe that you would make one of the best
rubbers who ever held a ball. I am going to Salisbury next week, and
you shall then make your _debut_.'

This was in the midst of a very severe winter we had some years ago,
when all Europe was under a coating of ice.

'But, father,' I said, 'shan't we find it rather cold?'

'Well,' said my father, with a bland smile, 'I will not pretend that
Salisbury Cathedral is particularly warm in this weather, but in
winter I always rub in knee-caps and mittens. I will tell Hodder to
knit you a full set at once.'

'But, father,' I said, 'Tom Wynne tells me that rubbing is the most
painful of all occupations. He even goes so far sometimes as to say
that it was the exhaustion of rubbing for you which turned him to
drink.'

'Nothing of the kind,' said my father. 'All that Tom needed to make
him a good rubber was enthusiasm. I am strongly of opinion that
without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome,
except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this
exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the
thighs, the most numbing for the fingers. It is a profession, Henry,
demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator. Now Tom's
enthusiasm for rubbing as an art was from the first exceedingly
feeble.'

I was on the eve of revolting, but I remembered what there was
lacerating his poor breast, and consented. And when I heard hints of
our 'working the Welsh churches' my sudden enthusiasm for the
rubber's art astonished even my father.

'My dear,' he said to my mother at dinner one day, 'what do you
think? Henry has developed quite a sudden passion for rubbing.'

I saw an expression of perplexity and mystification overspread my
mother's sagacious face.

'And in the spring,' continued my father, 'we are going into Wales
to rub.'

'Into Wales, a