“Oh please, Mum,” said the dauntless one, “they was away being mended. My stepfather thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t have boots. He said perhaps I might be able to get some more boots out of my salary....” The lady in the deerstalker looked alarmingly uncertain and Bealby controlled infinite distresses. “Haven’t you got a mother, Dick?” asked the beautiful voice suddenly. Its owner abounded in such spasmodic curiosities. “She—last year....” Matricide is a painful business at any time. And just as you see, in spite of every effort you have made, the jolliest lark in the world slipping out of your reach. And the sweet voice so sorry for him! So sorry! Bealby suddenly veiled his face with his elbow and gave way to honourable tears.... A simultaneous desire to make him happy, help him to forget his loss, possessed three women.... “That’ll be all right, Dick,” said the lady in the deerstalker, patting his shoulder. “We’ll get you some boots to-morrow. And to-day you must sit up beside William and spare your feet. You’ll have to go to the inns with him....” “It’s wonderful, the elasticity of youth,” said the inconspicuous lady five minutes later. “To see that boy now, you’d never imagine he’d had a sorrow in the world.” “Now get up there,” said the lady who was the leader. “We shall walk across the fields and join you later. You understand where you are to wait for us, William?” She came nearer and shouted, “You understand, William?” William nodded ambiguously. “’Ent a _Vool_,” he said. The ladies departed. “_You’ll_ be all right, Dick,” cried the actress kindly. He sat up where he had been put, trying to look as Orphan Dick as possible after all that had occurred. § 7 “Do you know the wind on the heath—have you lived the Gypsy life? Have you spoken, wanderers yourselves, with ‘Romany chi and Romany chal’ on the wind-swept moors at home or abroad? Have you tramped the broad highways, and, at close of day, pitched your tent near a running stream and cooked your supper by starlight over a fire of pinewood? Do you know the dreamless sleep of the wanderer at peace with himself and all the world?” For most of us the answer to these questions of the Amateur Camping Club is in the negative. Yet every year the call of the road, the Borrovian glamour, draws away a certain small number of the imaginative from the grosser comforts of a complex civilization, takes them out into tents and caravans and intimate communion with nature, and, incidentally, with various ingenious appliances designed to meet the needs of cooking in a breeze. It is an adventure to which high spirits and great expectations must be brought, it is an experience in proximity which few friendships survive—and altogether very great fun.