my knees, I was dozing, and the same policeman was saying gruffly, "'Ere, you, get outa that!"
I got. And, like the old woman, I continued to get; for every time I dozed, a policeman was there to rout me along again. Not long after, when I had given this up, I was walking with a young Londoner (who had been out to the colonies and wished he were out to them again), when I noticed an open passage leading under a building and disappearing in darkness. A low iron gate barred the entrance.
"Come on," I said. "Let's climb over and get a good sleep."
"Wot?" he answered, recoiling from me. "An' get run in fer three months! Blimey if I do!"
Later on, I was passing Hyde Park with a young boy of fourteen or fifteen, a most wretched-looking youth, gaunt and hollow-eyed and sick.
"Let's go over the fence," I proposed, "and crawl into the shrubbery for a sleep. The bobbies couldn't find us there."
"No fear," he answered. "There's the park guardians, and they'd run you in for six months."
Times have changed, alas! When I was a youngster I used to read of homeless boys sleeping in doorways. Already the thing has become a tradition. As a stock situation it will doubtlessly linger in literature for a century to come,
