xxviii MEMOIR OP THE AUTHOR 



about David being a youth with a ruddy countenance. 

 " A ruddy countenance," said the Rector, evidently 

 turning over in his mind v?hat vpould 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 recZ 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.E.E." 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 

 Eoses. The controversy " The Eose for the Garden," 



