answered by some other player in a poem; Hugh, who had been talked to
about the necessity of overcoming some besetting sin in Lent, wrote with
perfect good faith as his question, "What is your sin for Lent?"

As a child, and always throughout his life, he was absolutely free from
any touch of priggishness or precocious piety. He complained once to my
sister that when he was taken out walks by his elders, he heard about
nothing but "poetry and civilisation." In a friendly little memoir of
him, which I have been sent, I find the following passage: "In his early
childhood, when reason was just beginning to ponder over the meaning of
things, he was so won to enthusiastic admiration of the heroes and
heroines of the Catholic Church that he decided he would probe for
himself the Catholic claims, and the child would say to the father,
'Father, if there be such a sacrament as Penance, can I go?' And the
good Archbishop, being evasive in his answers, the young boy found
himself emerging more and more in a woeful Nemesis of faith." It would
be literally _impossible_, I think, to construct a story less
characteristic both of Hugh's own attitude of mind as well as of the
atmosphere of our family and household life than this!

He was always very sensitive to pain and discomfort. On one occasion,
when his hair was going to be cut, he said to my mother: "Mayn't I have
chloroform for it?"

And my mother has described to me a journey which she once took with him
abroad when he was a small boy. He was very ill on the crossing, and
they had only just time to catch the train. She had some luncheon with
her, but he said that the very mention of food made him sick. She
suggested that she should sit at the far end of the carriage and eat her
own lunch, while he shut his eyes; but he said that the mere sound of