, with a vagabond
intimacy for the most part denied to the children of their class. The
gamin strain that seemed innate in their blood was developed and
strengthened thus.

Part of these years had been spent with a family of cousins in a country
vicarage. The memory of this portion of their career still lay like a
heavy load on the Crevequers' consciousness. The atmosphere--an
atmosphere, one would think, of fairly ordinary respectability--had not
till then come their way. They stifled under it. No one in the household
but themselves was in the least degree foolish, and they, being frankly
babyish, and quite disreputable in their tastes, were more than ever
driven to one another, facing the rest of the world hand-in-hand,
hopelessly recognizing the impossibility of explanations, hopelessly
failing to arrive at any perception of the civilized and usual code. It
was to them merely an oppression, but from the oppression each had the
other to fall back upon, and they were content. But, notwithstanding
the smothering weight of civilization, they had always, even in those
days, got on extremely amicably with the world in general. The failure
to achieve friendship had not entered into their view of life as it was
lived by them. That was a thing they had had to learn later, and at
first with blank non-comprehension.

The little of decency that had in these days penetrated into them--no
one can quite escape the impress of the educative years--had during
their life in Naples slipped quite out of sight. In Naples they had
entered into a feckless, laughing world, where they had lived from hand
to mouth, and made friends in every street, and 'drifted about the
bottom.' So drifting, they had been still together. For that reason
everything had so greatly amused them; jests coming their way had, in
passing from the eyes of one to the eyes of the other, acquired an
overpowering humour; the world had been a merry playroom for two. Any
friend made by one of them had been introduced, as a matter of course,
into a three-cornered party; no other way could ever have occurred to
either.

And now, out of life the crucible, immutable values seemed to evolve
themselves. That story which Tommy had found so tedious on the beach at
Baja had been fulfilling itself of late. Life had truly proved a
furnace, whose pitiless flames melted one's bright metal and horribly
burnt one's hands.

Those who in the end emerged from that furnace would certainl