From all I can see, one interpretation is just as likely to be right as the other." Having brought matters to this pleasant and comforting issue, Mr.
Franklin appeared to think that he had completed all that was required of him.

He laid down flat on his back on the sand, and asked what was to be done next.
He had been so clever, and clear-headed (before he began to talk the foreign gibberish), and had so completely taken the lead in the business up to the present time, that I was quite unprepared for such a sudden change as he now exhibited in this helpless leaning upon me.

It was not till later that I learned--by assistance of Miss Rachel, who was the first to make the discovery--that these puzzling shifts and transformations in Mr.Franklin were due to the effect on him of his foreign training.

At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than another to settle itself on him firmly.

As a consequence of this, he had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more or less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a state of perpetual contradiction with himself.