en on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship
was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully
restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both
been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at
bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a
different category to these other contacts.

All these thoughts passed through David's brain in thirty seconds.
He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried
to live up to the situation.

"Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful
deduction). How sweet of you both--greeting me like this. I've come
home a very different David to the one that left you--what was it?
Five--six years ago?--to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot
in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk
about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health
since I got ill--and--wounded--in--South Africa. My memory has gone
for many things--I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but
it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit."
(Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your _home_,
Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've
got my living to earn in London....

"Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or
the War Office--or--your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?"

"I heard--my own dear boy--" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him
in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were
wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a
nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote
several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that
was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son
had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol
paper that this hospital--Colesberg--had fallen into the hands of
the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor
boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead,
or he would have written to me.'"

Here the Revd. Howel stopped to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.
David touched through his armour of cynicism, said--Nannie retiring
to prepare the evening meal--"Father dear, though I don't want to
refer too often to the past, I behaved disgracefully some time ago
and the Colonies seemed my only chance of setting myself right. I
did manage t