kind of
woman who would add twopence and tell him to be off, and the kind of
woman who, after a pause and a slow scrutiny, would deliberately refuse
to supply a glass of water. Then there was the atmosphere of the little
towns to be learned--the intolerable weariness of pavements, and the
patient persistence of policemen who would not allow you to sit down. He
discovered, also, during his wanderings, the universal fact that
policemen are usually good-hearted, but with absolutely no sense of
humor whatever; he learned this through various attempts to feign that
the policeman was in fancy-dress costume and had no real authority. He
learned, too, that all crimes pale before "resisting the police in the
execution of their duty"; then, he had to learn, to, the way in which
other tramps must be approached--the silences necessary, the sort of
questions which were useless, the jokes that must be laughed at and the
jokes that must be resented.

All this is beyond me altogether; it was beyond even Frank's own powers
of description. A boy, coming home for the holidays for the first time,
cannot make clear to his mother, or even to himself, what it is that has
so utterly changed his point of view, and his relations towards familiar
things.

* * * * *

So with Frank.

He could draw countless little vignettes of his experiences and
emotions--the particular sensation elicited, for example, by seeing
through iron gates happy people on a lawn at tea--the white china, the
silver, the dresses, the flannels, the lawn-tennis net--as he went past,
with string tied below his knees to keep off the drag of the trousers,
and a sore heel; the emotion of being passed by a boy and a girl on
horseback; the flood of indescribable associations roused by walking for
half a day past the split-oak paling of a great park, with lodge-gates
here and there, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the big house, among
its lawns and cedars and geranium-beds, seen now and then, far off in
the midst. But what he could not describe, or understand, was the inner
alchemy by which this new relation to things modified his own soul, and
gave him a point of view utterly new and bewildering. Curiously enough,
however (as it seems to me), he never seriously considered the
possibility of abandoning this way of life, and capitulating to his
father. A number of things, I suppose--inconceivable to
myself--contributed to his purpose; his gipsy blo