In the end we got back safely. I was so busy that I had no time to be ill myself. Nancy begged me not to talk about the war in her hearing, and I was ready to forget about it. The villagers called me ‘The Captain,’ otherwise I had few reminders except my yearly visit to the standing medical board. The board continued for some years to recommend me for a disability pension. The particular disability was neurasthenia; the train journey and the army railway-warrant filled out with my rank and regiment usually produced reminiscential neurasthenia by the time I reached the board. The award was at last made permanent at forty-two pounds a year. Ex-service men were continually coming to the door selling boot-laces and asking for cast-off shirts and socks. We always gave them a cup of tea and money. Islip was a convenient halt between the Chipping Norton and the Oxford workhouses. One day an out-of-work ex-service man, a steam-roller driver by trade, came calling with his three children, one of them a baby. Their mother had recently died in childbirth. We felt very sorry for them and Nancy offered to adopt the eldest child, Daisy, who was about thirteen years old and her father’s greatest anxiety. She undertook to train Daisy in housework so that she would be able later to go into service. Daisy was still of school age. Her father shed tears of gratitude, and Daisy seemed happy enough to be a member of the family. Nancy made her new clothes—we cleaned her, bought In shoes, and gave her a bedroom to herself. Daisy was not a success. She was a big ugly girl, strong as a horse and toughened by her three years on the roads. Her father was most anxious for her to continue her education, which had been interrupted by their wanderings. But Daisy hated school; she was put in the baby class and the girls of her own age used to tease her. In return she pulled their hair and thumped them, so they sent her to Coventry. After a while she grew homesick for the road. ‘That was a good life,’ she used to say. ‘Dad and me and my brother and the baby. The baby was a blessing. When I fetched him along to the back doors I nearly always won something. ’Course, I was artful. If they tried to slam the door in my face I used to put my foot in it and say: “This is my little orphan brother.” Then I used to look round and anything I seen I used to ast for. I used to ast for a pram for the baby, if I seen an old one in a shed; and I’d get it, too. Of course we had a pram really, a good one, and then we’d sell the pram I’d won, in the next town we come to. Good beggars always ast for something particlar, something they seen lying about. It’s no good asking for food or money. I used to pick up a lot for my dad. I was a better beggar nor he was, he said. We used to go along together singing _On the Road to Anywhere_. And there was always the Spikes to go to when the weather was bad. The Spike at Chippy Norton was our winter home. They was very good to us there.