Fillet noticed my ostentatious display of indifference and perhaps felt apprehensive of the latent devil that he had aroused, but his inward comment, I doubt not, was:  “We’ll see who’s going to be master here.  He can feel the weight of my hand again, if he likes.  We can’t let a bad-spirited little boy have all his own way.  I think we’ll break his defiance.  I think we will.”  And possibly, as he said it, he sucked in his breath with satisfaction.  Fillet realised that it was War and the first shots had been exchanged.

Sec.3

This was the preliminary skirmish.  Real and bloody battle was joined twenty-four hours later.  But, in the meantime, there was an early-evening lull which enclosed a delightful cricket match.  A team of junior Kensingtonians, that included Doe and myself, was going across Kensingtowe High Road to play the First 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.