a harvest-home of innocence, touched with I know not how
delicate a bloom of virginal anticipation; of emotion too volatile
for analysis, or perhaps eluding analysis by its very simplicity.
But whatever point the festival might have had for me was rudely
destroyed by my parents, who chose this day for jolting me back to
London in a railway-carriage. We have just arrived home from
Newquay, Cornwall, where we have been spending the summer holidays
for the sake of my health, as papa has not scrupled to blurt out,
once or twice, in my presence.

There is a strain of coarseness in papa; or perhaps I should say--for
the impression it leaves is primarily negative, as of something
_manque_--an incompleteness in the sensitive equipment. As yet it
can hardly be said to embarrass me; though I foresee a time when I
shall have to apologise for it to strangers. There is nothing absurd
in this. If a man may take pride in his ancestry, why may he not
apologise for his papa? My papa will be forgiven, for he is so
splendidly virile! He left our compartment at Bristol and did not
return again until the train stopped at Swindon for him to eat a bun.
In the interval, mamma took me from nurse and endeavoured to hush me
by singing--

Father's gone a-hunting. . . .

Which was untrue, for he had lit a pipe and withdrawn to a smoking
compartment. My nurse--an egregious female--had previously remarked,
"The dear child _do_ take such notice of the puff-puff!" As a matter
of fact, I took no interest in the locomotive; but I had observed it
sufficiently to be sure that it offered no facilities for hunting.
A few months ago I might have accepted the explanation: for our
family has affinity with what is vulgarly termed the upper class, and
my father inherits its crude and primitive instincts; among them a
passion for the chase. His appearance, as he returned to our
compartment, oppressed me for the hundredth time with a sense of its
superabundant and even riotous vitality. His cheeks were glowing,
and his whiskers sprouted like cabbages on either side of his
otherwise clean-shaven face. An indefinable flavour of the sea
mingled with the odour of tobacco which he diffused about the
carriage. It seemed as if the virile breezes of that shaggy Cornish
coast still blew about him; and I felt again that constriction of the
chest from which I had suffered during the past month.

After all, it is good to be back in London! Newquay, with