I experienced about ten minutes of grief; my parents were overwhelmed with anguish, and I can remember that, like a quick, rather clever child, I soon came to comprehend the sort of remark that cheered them, and almost overdid it in my zeal.

I am overwhelmed with shame," he said, "whenever I look at my mother's letters about that time when she speaks of the comfort I was to them.

It was a _fraus pia_, but it was a most downright _fraus_." I think I may relate one other curious incident among his public school experiences: it may seem very incredible, but I have his word for it that it is true.
"A sixth-form boy took a fancy to me, and let me sit in his room, and helped me in my work.

The night before he left the school I was sitting there, and just before I went away, being rather overcome with regretful sentiments, he caught hold of me by the arm and said, among other things, 'And now that I am going away, and shall probably never see you again, I don't believe you care one bit.' I don't know how I came to do it," he said, "because I was never demonstrative; but I bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and then blushed up to my ears.

He let me go at once; he was very much astonished, and I think not a little pleased; but it was certainly a curious incident." During this time his intellectual development was proceeding slowly.
"I went through three phases," he said.