There was no possibility of mistake. Mingled with the crowd at the nets on the other side of the field was a figure in gaiters and a shovel-hat just taking off his coat and betraying—an added horror—a brown flannel shirt. He held up a cricket-ball to his eye a moment, in the manner of fifty years ago, and, taking a short stodgy run, delivered it. His hat fell off and the ball was so wide that it went, not even into the net for which it was intended, but into the next adjoining. David’s companion saw (for that matter, David felt that all Europe saw) and laughed lightly. “I say, look at that funny old buffer in a flannel shirt!” he said. “He bowled into the wrong net. I wonder why he wears such rummy clothes.” David felt his heart sink into the toes of his cricket-boots, and leak out. But there was no help for it: his father was perfectly certain to kiss him when he joined the fellows at the nets, and the truth might as well come out now. “Oh, that’s my pater,” he said. “Oh, is it?” said Ward politely, with a faint suppressed smile. “But I expect he’s—he’s awfully clever, isn’t he? My guv’nor played cricket for England one year, and made fifty.” Just then David was beyond the reach of human comfort. At any other time it would have been a glorious thing to be walking with the son of a man who had made fifty for England, but just now such glory was in total eclipse. There, fifty yards away, was his own father putting his shovel-hat on again: he wore gaiters and a flannel shirt, he bowled into the wrong net, he would preach to-morrow, and perhaps again eat twice of resurrection-bolly. But a certain innate loyalty made him stand up for this parody of a parent. “Oh, my father doesn’t know a thing about cricket,” he said, “but he’s frightfully clever. He writes books about”—David could not remember what they were about—“he writes books that are supposed to be jolly good. He took a double-first at Oxford, too.”