“Tell him,” she said, “that he’s the father of a son.”

My mother’s mother gave a great cry. My father was beside her in a single leap. Always, as I have said, highly coloured, his face at this moment seemed literally on fire. The two fellow-members of my mother’s Mothers’ Guild, accompanied by my father’s five sisters-in-law, rushed into the hall. Mrs. Smith leaned over the banisters.

“A boy,” she said. “It’s a boy.”

“A boy?” said my father.

“Yes, a boy,” said Mrs. Smith.

There was a moment’s hush, and then Nature had its way. My father unashamedly burst into tears. My mother’s mother kissed him on the neck just as the two fellow-members burst into a hymn; and a moment later, my mother’s five sisters burst simultaneously into the doxology. Then my father recovered himself and held up his hand.

“I shall call him Augustus,” he said, “after myself.”

“Or tin?” suggested my mother’s mother. “What about calling him tin, after the saint?”

“How do you mean—tin?” said my father.

“Augus-tin,” said Mrs. Emily Smith.

But my father shook his head.

“No, it shall be tus,” he said. “Tus is better than tin.”

Then his five sisters-in-law resumed the singing, from which the two fellow-members had been unable to desist, until my father, who had been rapidly thinking, once again held up his hand.

“And I shall give the vicar,” he said, “the first opportunity of becoming Augustus’s godfather.”

Then he took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, tilted his chin, and closed his eyes; and with the full vigour of his immense voice, he too joined in the doxology.

CHAPTER II

Trials of my infancy. Varieties of indigestion. I suffer from a local erythema. Instance of my father’s unselfishness. Difficulty in providing a second godfather. Unexpected solution of the problem. The ceremony of my baptism. A narrow escape. Was it culpable carelessness? My 

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