He recalled various agitating and shameful scenes between his high-spirited mother and his drifting unscrupulous father. He summoned up, as opposed to these, his own delicious memories of long, irresponsible holidays, lovely uninterrupted weeks of idleness, by the sea at Weymouth, when he read so many thrilling books in the sunlit bow-window at Brunswick Terrace. How clearly he could see now the Jubilee clock on the Esplanade, the pompous statue of George the Third, the White Nore, the White Horse, the wave-washed outline of Portland breakwater! How he could recall his childish preference for the great shimmering expanse of wet sand, out beyond the bathing-machines, over the hot, dry sand under the seawall, where the donkeys stood and Punch and Judy was played!

“I am within twenty miles of Weymouth here,” he thought. “ That’s where my real life began⁠ ⁠… that’s the place I love⁠ ⁠… in spite of its lack of hedges and trees!”