re,
though frankness was encouraged, _naivete_ was repressed; and I am the
more grateful to these children for taking me in hand--for being able
to do so.

[Sidenote: _MANNERS_]

Tommy has returned from the Plymouth Eye Infirmary much quietened down
in many respects and, as most people would say, much better mannered.
He is neater and a better listener to conversation. He puts his shoes
under the table, does not throw them. But he has brought back also some
of the nurses' exclamations of surprise--"Oh, I say!" "Not I!" "You
don't say so!" "What idiocy!" and the like. No doubt those expressions
sounded quite proper among the nurses, but on Tommy's lips they seem
curiously more vulgar than his natural and rougher expletives. It is,
besides, as if one were eavesdropping outside the nurses' common room.

Much of the charm of these children, and of the grown-ups too, lies in
the fact that, apart from a few points on which etiquette is very
strict, they have no manners. I don't mean that they are bad-mannered;
quite the contrary; what I mean is that their manners are not codified.
Having no rules for behaviour under various circumstances, they must on
each occasion act according to their kindliness and desire to please,
or the reverse. They must go back to the first principles of manners.
What they are, that they appear. What they feel at the moment, that
they show. The kind man or child is kindly; the brutal or spiteful by
nature are brutal or spiteful in manner. Elsewhere, among people of
breeding, manners make the man--and hide him. Here, the man makes his
own manners, and in so doing still further reveals himself.

I have known a professional man who was rather well-spoken of for his
good manners, fail lamentably so soon as he found himself in
surroundings not his own. His code of manners did not apply there, and
outside his code he had no manners. He was excessively rude. He showed
at once that his customary good manners were founded on rules well
learnt, and not on any real consideration for other people's feelings.
The incredible impertinence of clergymen and district visitors
furnishes plenty of cases in point. Their manners, no doubt, are pretty
good among themselves. Yet it is a common saying here, "What chake they
gentry've got!" A 'district lady' entered Mrs Stidson's cottage without
knock or warning, just when Mrs Stidson was cleaning up and wanted no
visitors of any sort. "What's the matter with your eye?" a