"But it's got such a funny name,
Michael; I mean funny for their station in life. It's a girl and
they call it 'Vivvy,' which is short for Vivien. I told Mrs. Adams
she must have been reading Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; but she
said 'No, she wasn't much of a reader: Adams was, and it was some
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.
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