his
conversation: "hard lines!" he used to say, and "Good baazness," in a
bass bleat. Moreover, he had a long slow whistle that was esteemed the
very cream of humorous comment. Night after night he was there.

Also you knew he would not understand that _I_ could play billiards, and
regarded every stroke I made as a fluke. For a beginner I didn't play so
badly, I thought. I'm not so sure now; that was my opinion at the time.
But young Dodd's scepticism and the "good baazness" finally cured me
of my disposition to frequent the Eastry Arms, and so these noises had
their value in my world.

I made no friends among the young men of the place at all, and though I
was entering upon adolescence I have no love-affair to tell of here.
Not that I was not waking up to that aspect of life in my middle teens I
did, indeed, in various slightly informal ways scrape acquaintance with
casual Wimblehurst girls; with a little dressmaker's apprentice I got
upon shyly speaking terms, and a pupil teacher in the National School
went further and was "talked about" in connection with me but I was not
by any means touched by any reality of passion for either of these young
people; love--love as yet came to me only in my dreams. I only kissed
these girls once or twice. They rather disconcerted than developed those
dreams. They were so clearly not "it." I shall have much to say of love
in this story, but I may break it to the reader now that it is my role
to be a rather ineffectual lover. Desire I knew well enough--indeed, too
well; but love I have been shy of. In all my early enterprises in the
war of the sexes, I was torn between the urgency of the body and a
habit of romantic fantasy that wanted every phase of the adventure to
be generous and beautiful. And I had a curiously haunting memory of
Beatrice, of her kisses in the bracken and her kiss upon the wall, that
somehow pitched the standard too high for Wimblehurst's opportunities. I
will not deny I did in a boyish way attempt a shy, rude adventure or so
in love-making at Wimblehurst; but through these various influences,
I didn't bring things off to any extent at all. I left behind me no
devastating memories, no splendid reputation. I came away at last,
still inexperienced and a little thwarted, with only a natural growth of
interest and desire in sexual things.

If I fell in love with any one in Wimblehurst it was with my aunt. She
treated me with a kindliness that was only half maternal--