Then there was the need of becoming accustomed to an entirely different kind of food, eaten in an entirely different way, and under entirely different circumstances.  There was experience to be gained as to washing clothes—­I can almost see Frank now by a certain kind of stream, stripped to the waist, waiting while his shirt dried, smoking an ill-rolled cigarette, yet alert for the gamekeeper.  Above all, there was an immense volume of learning—­or, rather, a training of instinct—­to be gained respecting human nature:  a knowledge of the kind of man who would give work, the kind of man who meant what he said, and the kind of man who did not; the kind of woman who would threaten the police if milk or bread were asked for—­Frank learned to beg very quickly—­the 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