“How do you mean—tin?” said my father.
“Augus-tin,” said Mrs. Emily Smith.
But my father shook his head.
“No, it shall be tus,” he said. “Tus is better than tin.”
Then his five sisters-in-law resumed the singing, from which the two fellow-members had been unable to desist, until my father, who had been rapidly thinking, once again held up his hand.
“And I shall give the vicar,” he said, “the first opportunity of becoming Augustus’s godfather.”
Then he took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, tilted his chin, and closed his eyes; and with the full vigour of his immense voice, he too joined in the doxology.
CHAPTER II
Trials of my infancy. Varieties of indigestion. I suffer from a local erythema. Instance of my father’s unselfishness. Difficulty in providing a second godfather. Unexpected solution of the problem. The ceremony of my baptism. A narrow escape. Was it culpable carelessness? My father transfers his worship to St. James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye.