lady's name in a story that had stuck in his head, and that as her
mother's name was Susan and his was Jane, she hadn't minded.'"

CHAPTER XI

DAVID GOES ABROAD

David Williams had an enthusiastic greeting when he went home to
Pontystrad for the Easter of 1909. It was an early Easter that year,
whether you like it or not; it suits my story better so, because
then David can turn up in Brussels at the end of April, and yet have
attended to a host of necessary things before his departure on a
long absence.

He first of all devoted himself to making the old Vicar happy for a
few weeks in a rather blustery, showery March-April. His father was
full of wonderment and exultation over the honourable publicity his
barrister son had attained. "You'll be a Judge, Davy; at any rate a
K.C., before I'm dead! But marry, boy, _marry_. _That's_ what you
must do now. Marry and give me grandchildren." The burly curate
privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to
the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had
worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and
had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and
London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded
virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by
Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life.
If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of
greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention. However,
he kept most of these thoughts to himself and his wife, the squire's
daughter; who as she somehow thought David _ought_ to have married
_her_, was a little bit sentimental about him and considered he was
a Galahad.

Old Nannie remained as usual wistfully puzzled, half fearing the
explanation of the enigma if it ever came.

Returned to London and Fig Tree Court--which he was soon
vacating--David obtained through his and her bankers a passport for
himself and another for Miss Vivien Warren, thirty-four, British
subject, and so forth, travelling on the Continent, a lady of
independent means. He re-arranged all David's and Vivie's money
matters, stored such of Vivie's property and his own as was
indispensable at Honoria Armstrong's house in Kensington, and left a
box containing a complete man's outfit in charge of Bertie Adams;
bade farewell as "David Williams" and "Uncle David" to Honoria and
her two babies, and to the sti