We had never been friends and companions, like other fathers and sons I knew.

I remember him as a harsh, red-faced man, whom, as a boy, I avoided as much as possible.

As I grew older I never went to him for advice; he was to me a sort of walking pocket-book, and not much else.

Mother has often told me that she remembers him as something quite different, and I suppose it must be true, otherwise she would not have married him; but to me he was a source of supply coupled with a bad temper, that was all.

That I was not utterly impossible, that, going my own gait as I did, I was not a complete young blackguard, I know now was due entirely to Mother.