THE MICROBE 



convenient to shift your bank, though a long drive 

 home might be impending. One learned also that 

 to be rained upon heavily for many hours, beyond 

 the passing discomfort which was not to be recognised, 

 was of no consequence whatever. And I see by the 

 official report of the British rainfall that the annual 

 deposit at this particular spot is sixty inches, nearly 

 thrice that of the region from which I write ! One 

 learned to regard the neck comforter, so deplorably 

 popular with doting mothers and anxious guardians 

 generally, as an unthinkable effeminacy, and an over- 

 coat as only permissible in a winter railway journey 

 or a long drive in the snow. And the north-western 

 slope of Exmoor was as cold as it was wet. I don't 

 know what our fond mammas would have said if 

 they had suspected the deliberate recklessness of our 

 code; but our guardians seemed to be possessed of some 

 heaven-sent inspiration of how a boy should be dealt 

 with. Nobody ever had a cold. I suppose there was 

 a doctor some dozen miles away, but I have no recol- 

 lection of his existence. There was incessant shooting, 

 too, in winter, but the weather was not ever, I think, 

 taken into the smallest account unless we were abso- 

 lutely snowed up, which sometimes happened on 

 Exmoor. I was supposed to be delicate when I went 

 there. It is quite certain that the cure was more 

 effective than any doctors. By the close of the first 

 fishing season I was tolerably handy with small trout, 

 and a curious thing happened in the summer holidays 

 which requires a short preamble. 



As my people, according to their usual habit, were 

 to spend it in Switzerland, I was dispatched together 



19 



