sounded at the front door, I cannot say. But I know that as a child
it never occurred to me to regard my father's profession as a serious
affair. To me he was merely playing there, surrounded by big books
and bundles of documents, labelled profusely but consisting only of
blank papers; by japanned tin boxes, lettered imposingly, but for the
most part empty. "Sutton Hampden, Esq.," I remember was practically
my mother's work-box. The "Drayton Estates" yielded apparently
nothing but apples, a fruit of which my father was fond; while
"Mortgages" it was not until later in life I discovered had no
connection with poems in manuscript, some in course of correction,
others completed.

Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us. His hair stood
up from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked;
and this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an
expression of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were
needed, to the suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.

"This is the youngster," said my father, taking me from my mother, and
passing me on. "Tall for his age, isn't he?"

With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he
was smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held
out a fat and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine,
brought to my mind the picture of the walrus in my natural history
book; with the other he flapped me kindly on the head.

"Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?" he observed,
still holding my hand. "And that," he added with a wink of one of his
small eyes towards my father, "is about the 'ighest compliment I can