,
insolent boy that had gone off to London with ill-concealed glee in
1896 and this grave-mannered, polite, considerate, pleasant-voiced
young man who had already managed to find good employment in London
before he revealed himself anew to his delighted father.

These doubts David read in Nannie's mind. But he would not give
them time and chance to become more precise and formulated.
Gradually she would become used to the seeming miracle. In the
meantime he would return to London, and if his father's recovery was
complete he would not revisit "home" till Christmas. As soon as he
was able to write, his father would forward him the copy of his
birth-certificate, and he would likewise answer in the sense agreed
upon any letters of reference or enquiry: would state the
apprenticeship to architecture with Praed A.R.A., and then the
impulse to go out to South Africa, the slight wound--David insisted
it was slight, a fuss about nothing, because he had enquired about
necrosis of the jaw and realized that even if he had recovered it
would have left indisputable marks on face and throat. In fact there
were so many complications involved in an escape from the Boers,
only to be justified under the code of honour prevailing in war
time, that he would rather his father said little or nothing about
South Africa but left him to explain all that. A point of view
readily grasped by the Revd. Howel, who to get such a son back would
even have not thought too badly of desertion--and the negative
letters of the War Office said nothing of that.

So early in September, after the most varied, anxious, successful
six weeks in his life--so far--David Vavasour Williams returned to
Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple.

CHAPTER V

READING FOR THE BAR

It had been a hot, windless day in London, in early September.
Though summer was in full swing in the country without a hint of
autumn, the foliage in the squares and gardens of the Inns of Court
was already seared and a little shrivelled. The privet hedges were
almost black green; and the mould in the dismal borders that they
screened looked as though it had never known rain or hose water and
as if it could no more grow bright-tinted flowers than the asbestos
of a gas stove which it resembled in consistency and colour. It was
now an evening, ending one of those days which are peculiarly
disheartening to a Londoner returned from a long stay in the depths
of the country--a country which has hil