A little boy, aged about eight, with nearly all his front teeth gone, came down early for breakfast this morning while I was having mine. He asked me where the waiters were, and rang. When one arrived, the little boy discovered that he could speak no French. However, the waiter said “CafÉ?” and he said “One”; but he told me that he also wanted buns. While breakfasting, he said to me that he had got up early because he was going down into the town that morning by the Funicular, as his mother was to buy him his Christmas present, a silver lever watch. He said: “I hate to be hurried for anything. Now, at home, I have to go to school, and I get up early so that I shan’t be hurried, but my breakfast is always late; so I have too much time before breakfast, and nothing to do, and too little time after breakfast when I’ve a lot to do.” In answer to my question, he said gravely that he was going into the Navy. He knew the exam, was very stiff, and that if you failed at a certain age you were barred out altogether; and he asked me whether I thought it was better to try the exam, early with only a little preparation, or to leave it late with a long preparation. He thought the first course was the best, because you could go in again if you failed. I asked him if he didn’t want some jam. He said no, because the butter was so good, and if he had jam he wouldn’t be able to taste the butter. He then rang the bell for more milk, and explained to me that he couldn’t drink coffee strong, and the consequence was that he had a whole lot of coffee left and no milk to drink it with.. . . He said he lived in London, and that some shops down in the town were better than London shops. By this time a German had descended. He and I both laughed. But the child stuck to his point. We asked him: “What shops?” He said that jerseys and watches were nicer in the town than in London. In this he was right, and we had to admit it. As a complete rÉsumÉ, he said that there were fewer things in the town than in London, but some of the things were nicer. Then he explained to the German his early rising, and added an alternative explanation, namely, that he had been sent to bed at 6.45, whereas 7.15 was his legal time.

Later in the day I asked him if he would come down early again to-morrow and have breakfast with me. He said: “I don’t know. I shall see.” There was no pose in this. Simply a perfect preoccupation with his own interests and welfare. I should say he is absolutely egotistic. He always employs natural, direct methods to get what he wants and to avoid what lie doesn’t want.

I met him again a few afternoons later on the luge-track. He was very solemn. He said he had decided not to go in for the single-luge race, as it all depended on weight. I said: “Put stones in your pocket. Eat stones for breakfast.”

He laughed slightly and uncertainly. “You can’t eat stones for breakfast,” he said. “I’m getting on fine at skating. I can turn round on one leg.”

“Do you still fall?” (He was notorious for his tumbles.)

“Yes.”

“How often?”

He reflected. Then: “About twelve times an hour.... If I skated all day and all night I should fall twelve twelves—144, isn’t it?”

I said it would be twenty-four twelves.

“Oh! I see——”

“Two hundred and——”

“Eighty-eight,” he overtook me quickly. “But I didn’t mean that. I meant all day and all night, you know—‘evening. People don’t generally skate all through the night, do they?” Pause. “Six from 144—138, isn’t it? I’ll say 138, because you’d have to take half an hour off for dinner, wouldn’t you?”

He became silent, discussing seriously within himself whether half an hour would suffice for dinner, without undue hurrying.