asked to see me ... she said her husband was out of work and
refused to give her enough money to provide for all her
children, that he had advised her to apply to _you_ for the
maintenance of _your_ son! Relying on what you had told me I
sent for Bridget and we both told her we had made every
enquiry and now refused absolutely to believe in her stories
of five years ago--that we were sure you were _not_ the
father of her eldest child. Bridget, for example, believed
the postman was its father. Jenny burst into tears, and as
she did not persist in her claim my heart was moved, and I
gave her ten shillings, but told her _pretty plainly_ that
if she ever made such a claim again I should go to the
police. You should have heard Bridget defending you! _Such_
a champion. If you want a witness to character for your
references you should call _her_! She is loud in your
praise.

_October_ 22.

There is one thing I want to tell you; and it is easier to
write it than say it. Your mother did not die when you were
three years old--much worse: she left me--ran away with an
engineer who was tracing out the branch railway. He seemed a
nice young fellow and I had him often up at the Vicarage,
and _that_ was the way he repaid my hospitality! He wrote to
me a year afterwards asking me to divorce her. As though a
Clergyman of the Church of England could do such a thing! I
had offered to take her back--not then--it would have been a
mockery--but by putting advertisements into the South Wales
papers. But after her paramour's letter--which I did not