Quite without warning a small boy standing close behind where they sat burst into a bubble of irrepressible giggling, and walked rapidly away, cramming his handkerchief into his mouth. Otherwise just close round them was dead silence and attention, and David looked in impotent exasperation at the rows of rapt faces and slightly quivering mouths, knowing that this priceless conversation was being carefully stored up. He was aware that his father was being gloriously funny, that if it had been anybody else’s father who was enunciating those views, he would have listened with internal quiverings, or, like Stephens, would have found himself compelled to move away from politeness. But, agitated and nervous, waiting for his innings, he could see nothing funny about it. Wearily he explained that you could not be stumped off a hit to the boundary, that you were given four runs without running for them; but his father thought it an arguable point, and argued. . . . Two wickets fell in rapid succession after this, and David began putting on his pads. Aunt Eleanor’s five shillings had been spent in a left-hand glove, and even at this dark and anxious moment it afforded him a gleam of consolation. But the donning of these protective articles awoke further criticism. “Why are you putting all those things on, my boy?” asked the Archdeacon. “You shouldn’t be afraid of a knock or two. Why, we never thought anything of a shooter on the shins when I was a lad. And gloves: surely you can’t bat in gloves.” Firm, fixed smiles illuminated the faces of those round. David had rubbed the second glove in, so to speak, rather profusely during this last week; the school generally had heard a little too much about it. But David was hearing a little too much about it now . . . and a shooter on the shins! how could a shooter hit your shins? Blazes’ pater was talking through his hat, that very odd hat. “Oh, every one wears pads, and gloves, if they’ve got them,” said David rather viciously. “Well, well, I suppose we were rather too Spartan for these days,” said his father. “Ah, well blocked; well blocked, sir.”