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But I could not help feeling that a crisis in my affairs had arrived, and I dared not return to my lodging with the now too familiar remark, "I've got the sack," so forgathering with another boy, similarly situated, I cut loose from such conventionalities as I had hitherto preserved; and after a riotous expenditure of sixpence in fried fish and chips and gingerbeer, we climbed the railings of Kensington Gardens, and creeping like Indians through the gloom, ensconced ourselves within the shrubbery by the Serpentine under a heap of plant matting, and slept soundly till morning.

That was the beginning of an Arab life in the great city, which, I suppose, must have had a certain charm for me, in that it was made up almost entirely of exciting episodes, tempered by the two salient factors of cold and hunger. I can never remember being warm and well fed together for more than an hour or two at a time, and those occasions were so rare as to mark their occurrence indelibly as periods to be reckoned from. I had no prevision, no ambition except to get a good feed and a warm place to sleep, no anxiety save to avoid the policeman, for the School Board Official was not yet in existence, nor as far as I was aware, any other person whose business it was to look after waifs and strays such as I was.