The old
Russian chap was hurt in the factory where he worked, and that's the
way my father--whose name was Robert Donaldson--got to know my mother.
There was a question of compensation, and my father conducted the case.
He won it.
"And he won a wife, too. She was nineteen when I was born. Father was
getting on, but they were poor and had a hard time to make ends meet.
They worshipped each other and worshipped me. You can think whether I
adored them!
"Mother was the most beautiful creature you ever saw. Everyone looked
at her. I used to notice that when I was a wee chap, walking with my
hand in hers. When I was ten and going to school my father had a bad
illness--rheumatic fever. We got hard up while he was sick; and then came
a letter for mother from Russia. Some distant relations in Moscow had had
her traced by detectives. It seemed there was quite a lot of money which
ought to come to her, and if she would go to Russia and prove who she was
she could get it.
"If father'd been well and making enough for us all he'd never have let
her go, but he was weak and anxious about the future, so she took things
into her own hands and went, without waiting for yes or no, or anything
except to find a woman who'd look after father and me while she was gone.
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