difficult to learn and difficult to keep. _Honour thy father and thy mother_ . He loved his mother. He would always love her, even if she forgot him. He might not love her so much as formerly, but he would always love her. _Thou shalt do no murder_ . Michael had no intention of doing murder. Since the Hangman in Punch and Judy he was cured of any inclination towards murder. _Thou shalt not commit adultery_ . Why should he ever want to marry another man’s wife? At present he could not imagine himself married to anybody. He supposed that as one result of growing up he would get married. But, forewarned, he would take care not to choose somebody else’s wife. _Thou shalt not steal_ . With perfect freedom to eat when and where and what one liked, why should one steal? _Thou shalt not bear false witness_ . It would not be necessary to lie when grown up, because one could not then be punished. _Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ox_ . He would covet nothing, for when he was grown up he would be able to obtain whatever he wanted. This desire to be grown up sustained him through much, even through the long foggy nights which made his bedroom more fearfully still than before. The room would hardly seem any longer to exist in the murk which crept through it. The crocus-shaped jet of the gas burned in the vaporous midnight with an unholy flame somehow, thought Michael, as candles must look, when at the approach of ghosts they burn blue. How favourable to crime was fog, how cleverly the thief might steal over the coal-yard at the back of the house and with powerful tools compel the back-door to open. And the murderers, how they must rejoice in the impenetrable air as with long knives they stole out from distant streets in search of victims. Michael’s nerves were so wrought upon by the unchanging gloom of these wintry days that even to be sent by Nurse to fetch her thimble or work-bag before tea was a racking experience.