For a year the son worked hard. During his month's holiday he made a couple of centuries in first-class cricket, and various papers commenting on this achievement expressed their regret that so promising a cricketer should only be available in August. It is needless to add that the other members of the family saw to it that these references did not escape the attention of their father. Next season the county started so well, that by the end of May it stood at the head of the championship, and the young financier was entreated to turn out for the Yorkshire match in the middle of June. On such an occasion parental discipline was naturally relaxed. And an innings of 87 on a tricky wicket was followed by an invitation to play for the Gentlemen at Lords. Parental pride was flattered. Next season the same thing happened, only more frequently. There was, in fact, an understanding that he was available for all the important matches, and very soon not only the fixtures with Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey, came to be regarded as important, but also those with Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Worcester. Indeed, in five years' time the son found himself playing county cricket steadily from May to August and as an amateur. Things happen like that. Still the pact, as the elderly gentleman in the pavilion asserted, had been made in the right spirit. And it was, after all, a family affair. But the fine distinction between the amateur and the amateur professional is defined only by the obvious moral to this story, and the subtler moral had passed unnoticed by the elderly reactionary in the pavilion. A young man, twenty-three years of age, has been expensively educated for some ten to twelve years. And he is faced at the end of his education, when it is assumed, that is to say, that he is equipped with the knowledge and trained ability that will enable him to take up that portion of the world's work for which he is best fitted, with two alternatives. Either he can go into his father's business, or else he can lose his caste and sign on as a professional cricketer. It occurred neither to the father nor to the son nor to the elderly gentleman who repeated the story in the pavilion that any other alternative was possible, or, indeed, desirable. The son was not in a position to say to his father: 'Of course I wouldn't become a pro. But I'm really not keen on your business. I shouldn't be a success at it. I'd rather do something else.' He could not say that, because there was nothing else for him to do. Six years earlier he could have gone to Sandhurst. If he had worked harder at school he might possibly have passed into the Egyptian civil service. It is possible that his blue would have obtained for him a schoolmastership, but his gulf in mods, would have limited his choice of schools. And the prospects of a junior master at a second-rate Public School are not inviting. So, whatever his own inclinations might have been, he had to accept his father's offer.