Once when I was sailing with my cousin, the boy who was our crew talked of
a music-hall at a neighbouring seaport, and how the girls there gave
themselves to men, and his language was as extravagant as though he
praised that courtezan after whom they named a city or the queen of Sheba
herself. Another day he wanted my cousin to sail some fifty miles along
the coast and put in near some cottages where he had heard there were
girls "and we would have a great welcome before us." He pleaded with
excitement (I imagine that his eyes shone) but hardly hoped to persuade
us, and perhaps but played with fabulous images of life and of sex. A
young jockey and horse-trainer, who had trained some horses for my uncle,
once talked to me of wicked England while we cooked a turkey for our
Christmas dinner making it twist about on a string in front of his
harness-room fire. He had met two lords in England where he had gone
racing, who "always exchanged wives when they went to the Continent for a
holiday." He himself had once been led into temptation and was going home
with a woman, but having touched his scapular by chance, saw in a moment
an angel waving white wings in the air. Presently I was to meet him no
more and my uncle said he had done something disgraceful about a horse.