XXVili MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 
about David being a youth with a ruddy countenance. 
«A ruddy countenance,” said the Rector, evidently 
turning over in his mind what would be a suitable 
explanation, and his eyes, all unseeing, fixed them- 
selves hard and stern on the small boy in front of 
him. ‘A ruddy countenance,” he repeated; ‘a 
ruddy countenance, which probably meant red hair.” 
As he appeared to be glaring hard at the small boy 
all the time, it can be well imagined how the latter’s 
colour spread considerably beyond his hair. Mr. 
Foster-Melliar, however, when he was taxed about 
it afterwards, declared that he never saw the boy, 
and did not, indeed, know that there was one with 
red hair in the church. 
It was delightful to hear him read the Lessons. 
He read them so as to make it appear almost as 
though the scene was actually happening in front of 
you. The writer has known several people who 
were drawn to Sproughton church merely to hear him 
read the Lessons, which are too often merely 
‘‘intoned.” 
The precise orderly nature that made him put his 
watch down in front of him when in the pulpit 
and take it up again exactly fifteen minutes later, 
led him to enjoy chess problems. For years he 
never missed solving the problems set weekly in 
‘The Field,’ and the initials ‘‘W.R.R.” were 
almost unfailing in the column set apart for success- 
ful answers. Once, for a month, he was ill and 
unable to attempt the problems, and this greatly 
distressed him. The preciseness of a chessboard 
appealed to him, and it may have been this precise- 
ness which accounted for his attitude with regard to 
Roses. The controversy ‘‘ The Rose for the Garden,” 
