Help ! ....Where IS the boy we knew ?

She was preparing for three months long leave.Leaving the next day, the start of the school holidays.

Advice for the staff who would stand in for her for the next few months. " He really is such a good boy," she told them. " Please, while I'm away, just make sure he gets the decent white shirts. No frayed collars. He takes such a pride in the way he looks. Choose the best for him. He's helpful and polite. If I could, I would take him with me !"

That was the impression  he created with all the staff, reliable, very neat, respectful , good with the younger children..... and smiling, always smiling.

Being school holidays, the a group of boys went on a fishing, camping week The site was on the coast, right next to the sea and fairly crowded with other campers and fishermen. It was a good time of the year for the fish.

Come the day to go, the boys got up early that morning, took down the tent, folded it up and then started to pack everything else. Transport had been arranged to pick them up with their gear and bring them back to the home.  But as simple as that, it wasn't to be.

Other campers who had woken, and started to prepare themselves for early morning fishing discovered their fishing tackle missing....Expensive rods and  reels .... gone, obviously overnight, someone had gone through the camp-site and stolen their best tackle.

Probably because they all knew that the boys were from "the Home", and possibly because the boys were packing up that morning, they were suspected. The police were called and the boys were made to unfold the tent. Sure enough, there was the missing fishing gear, all neatly wrapped up in the canvas.

Caught with their hands in the cookie-jar.......statements were taken...one boy was singled out from all of the others... the smiling one.

He was charged with theft.

The change was immediate and dramatic.

"Before, he was polite. Now he is downright rude"  they said.  "He was respectful, and now he isn't. He was helpful,... now he is defiant.He was neat and looked after himself and now he doesn't seem to care. He had good manners, and smiled now h can be quite unpleasant and he sulks.

Help! Where IS the boy we knew?