Once when I was sailing with my cousin,
the boy who was our crew talked of a music-hall at
a neighbouring seaport, and how the girls there gave
themselves to men, and his language was as extravagant
as though he praised that courtezan after whom they
named a city or the queen of Sheba herself. Another
day he wanted my cousin to sail some fifty miles along
the coast and put in near some cottages where he had
heard there were girls “and we would have a
great welcome before us.” He pleaded with
excitement (I imagine that his eyes shone) but hardly
hoped to persuade us, and perhaps but played with
fabulous images of life and of sex. A young jockey
and horse-trainer, who had trained some horses for
my uncle, once talked to me of wicked England while
we cooked a turkey for our Christmas dinner making
it twist about on a string in front of his harness-room
fire. He had met two lords in England where he
had gone racing, who “always exchanged wives
when they went to the Continent for a holiday.”
He himself had once been led into temptation and was
going home with a woman, but having touched his scapular
by chance, saw in a moment an angel waving white wings
in the air. Presently I was to meet him no more
and my uncle said he had done something disgraceful
about a horse.