values in my life perplexingly altered, attempting readjustment.
One of these disturbing and illuminating events was that I was
robbed of a new pocket-knife and the other that I fell in love. It
was altogether surprising to me to be robbed. You see, as an only
child I had always been fairly well looked after and protected, and
the result was an amazing confidence in the practical goodness of
the people one met in the world. I knew there were robbers in the
world, just as I knew there were tigers; that I was ever likely to
meet robber or tiger face to face seemed equally impossible.

The knife as I remember it was a particularly jolly one with all
sorts of instruments in it, tweezers and a thing for getting a stone
out of the hoof of a horse, and a corkscrew; it had cost me a
carefuly accumulated half-crown, and amounted indeed to a new
experience in knives. I had had it for two or three days, and then
one afternoon I dropped it through a hole in my pocket on a footpath
crossing a field between Penge and Anerley. I heard it fall in the
way one does without at the time appreciating what had happened,
then, later, before I got home, when my hand wandered into my pocket
to embrace the still dear new possession I found it gone, and
instantly that memory of something hitting the ground sprang up into
consciousness. I went back and commenced a search. Almost
immediately I was accosted by the leader of a little gang of four or
five extremely dirty and ragged boys of assorted sizes and slouching
carriage who were coming from the Anerley direction.

"Lost anythink, Matey?" said he.

I explained.