and then sit down to wait for some employment to turn
up. It was really no use for me to decide what I should do, for unless
I showed an especial craving for some profession I knew that he would
settle everything, and as I had two years before me I thought that
there was no particular hurry, which is, I suppose, the dangerous state
of mind of many undergraduates.

I did not understand that my father's wish for me to talk French was
part of any definite scheme, and for the life of me I cannot make out
why he settled upon my profession and told me nothing about it, but I
suppose that unless I ever become a parent there are some things which
will puzzle me all my life.

"One of the reasons the English are hated on the Continent is because
they can only speak their own language, and when they are not
understood they shout," he said to me, and I am afraid I did not care
much what the English were thought of on the Continent; at any rate I
did not see what I could do to make them more popular. "I intend that
you shall at least be able to speak French properly," he went on; "you
are not going to stay with us at the hotel, but live with a French
family about three miles out of the town."

I detested the idea and had to submit to it, but I acknowledge that I
enjoyed my visit to France, though I was told that I spent too much
time at the hotel. The fact was that my family lived three miles up
hill from the town, and on a bicycle I could reach the sea or my people
in a few minutes, but after I had bathed I had to think a lot before I
started back. I was arrested twice, once for riding furiously and also
for not having my name on my bicycle, accidents which my father assured
me would never have happened had I been able to talk French fluently,
though it was absolutely impossible that I could under any
circumstances or in any language have talked as fluently as the
policeman who stopped me. My French family were very nice to me, and
we got on splendidly together after they discovered that I did not mind
them laughing at my pronunciation. After two months, during which I
had attacked the language vigorously, Nina came from Paris to join us.
I expected that she would find my accent amusing, but I made a mistake.
What my mother had once mentioned to me as her awkward age had been
lived through, and after a few days I began to wonder why I had ever
found it easy to be irritated with her. If things go well I generally
have an