Never did human boy have three more sporting associates in a swimming four than I had in White, Cully, and Johnson.  Because I was a year younger than they it was their pleasure to call me the “Baby of the Team,” and to take a pride in my successes.  They would, in order to pace me, take half-a-length’s start in a two-lengths’ practice race, and make me strain every nerve to beat them.  Or they would time me with their watches over the sixty yards, and, all arriving at different conclusions as to my figures, agree only in the fact that I was establishing records.  Once, when according to a stop-watch I really did set up a record, Cully, forgetting his dignity as a prefect in his enthusiasm as a Bramhallite, cried “Alleluia! alleluia!” and hurled Johnson’s hat into the air, so that it fell into the water.

The members of Erasmus’ Four were at first incredulous.

“Heard of Bramhall’s find?” said they.  “They’ve discovered a young torpedo in Ray.  He’s quite good and they’ll probably get into the final.  But we needn’t be afraid.  They’ve a weak string in Johnson, while we haven’t a weakness anywhere.  However, we’ll take no risks.”  And so they started a savagely severe system of training.

Meantime White constituted himself my medical adviser, and some such dialogue as this would take place every morning: 

“Now, Ray, got any pain under the heart?”

“No.”

“Do you feel anything like a stomach-ache?”

“Only when I see your face.”

“Look here, I’d knock your face through your head, if I didn’t want your services so badly.  Are you at all stiff?”

“Yes, bored stiff with your conversation.”

It was true that there had been no trace of the faintness which had attacked me a year before.  Had there been, I should have kept quiet about it, for, in that time of excitement, I would willingly have shortened my life by ten years, if I could have made certain of securing the Cup for Bramhall.  Only one thing marred this period of my great ascendency; Radley, Bramhall’s junior house-master, never gave me a word of praise or flattery.

That wound to my self-love festered stingingly.  I persisted in letting my thoughts dwell on it.  I would frame sentences with which Radley would express his surprise at my transcendent powers, such as:  “Ray, you’re a find for the house”; “I’m glad Bramhall possesses you, and no other house”; “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a faster boy-swimmer”; “You’re the best swimmer in the school by a long way.”  I would turn any conversation with him on to the subject of the race, and suffer a few seconds’ acute suspense, while I waited for his compliment.  I would depreciate my own swimming to him, feeling in my despair that a murmured contradiction would suffice:  but this method I gave up, owing to the horror I experienced lest he should agree.

And, when he mercilessly refused to gratify me, I would wander away and review all the occasions on which he had seen me swim, recalling how I then acquitted myself; or I would laboriously enumerate all the people who must have told him in high terms of my performances.  A growing annoyance with him pricked me into a defiant determination, so that I reiterated to myself:  “I’ll do it.  I’ll win it.  I swear I will!”