st Eleven of the
Preparatory School, an academy flippantly known as the "Nursery,"
its boys being "Suckers." Edgar Doe had been a certain choice.
Brought up in the midst of a great cricketing family, the Grays of
Surrey tradition, in his beautiful Falmouth home which boasted
cricket pitches of its own, he was as polished a bat as the Nursery
had ever known. I came to be selected as a promising change-bowler.

We were walking in our flannels towards the Nursery gates, when Doe,
referring with bad taste to the Fillet incident just closed, began
to chastise me with his cricket bat. I returned the treatment with a
pair of pads. So we went along, full in the public view, each trying
to "get in a good one" on the other. I managed to knock Doe's bat
out of his hand, and, as he stooped to pick it up, he received my
pads upon his person. This was actually in the middle of the High
Street. He laughed loudly, and crying "O you young beast!" started
to belabour me with his fists. Suddenly we stopped, let our hands
fall to our sides, and began to walk like nuns in a cloister. Radley
had joined us.

"If you're so anxious to whack each other," said he pleasantly,
"won't you commission me to do it in both cases?"

We grinned sheepishly and said nothing. My mind formulated the
sentence "Good Lord, no!" and, quickly constructing what would have
happened had I uttered it aloud, I tittered uncomfortably and looked
away. There was an awkward pause as we walked along with our master
between us.

"Well, Ray," he said, endeavouring to put us at our ease, "are you a
great batsman?"

"No, sir," replied I. "Doe is."

"So I've heard. I'm coming to see what he's made of."

Doe could find nothing to say in reply, but lifted up his face and
looked at Radley with the gratitude of a dog. For my part I felt a
pleasing, squirmy excitement to think that we were to walk on to the
Nursery field in the company of the great Middlesex amateur; and,
incidentally, I took the opportunity of measuring myself against
him.

We arrived on the ground, creating less sensation than I would have
liked. Radley took a deck-chair in front of the pavilion next to Dr.
Chapman, or "Chappy," surely the stoutest and jolliest of school
doctors. The fact that Chappy, occupying so withdrawn a position as
medical officer to the two schools, should have been such a
memorable figure in the life of the boys testifies to the largeness
of his personality. And, not being the m