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there where the crimped surplices lay quietly folded. It was
not the chapel but still you had to speak under your breath.
It was a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he
had been there to be dressed as boatbearer, the evening of
the Procession to the little altar in the wood. A strange and
holy place. The boy that held the censer had swung it lift-
ed by the middle chain to keep the coals lighting. That was
called charcoal: and it had burned quietly as the fellow had
swung it gently and had given off a weak sour smell. And
then when all were vested he had stood holding out the boat
to the rector and the rector had put a spoonful of incense in
it and it had hissed on the red coals.
The fellows were talking together in little groups here
and there on the playground. The fellows seemed to him
to have grown smaller: that was because a sprinter had
knocked him down the day before, a fellow out of second
of grammar. He had been thrown by the fellow’s machine
lightly on the cinder path and his spectacles had been bro-
ken in three pieces and some of the grit of the cinders had
gone into his mouth.
That was why the fellows seemed to him smaller and
farther away and the goalposts so thin and far and the soft
grey sky so high up. But there was no play on the football
grounds for cricket was coming: and some said that Barnes
would be prof and some said it would be Flowers. And all
over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowl-
ing twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came
the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft grey air. They
said: pick, pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a foun-

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