During these years when he knew Mr. Lasher he was undoubtedly
unfortunate. He was shortsighted, but no one had, as yet, discovered
this, and he was, therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could
not prevent and for a good deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply
from his eagerness to do what he was told and his inability to see his
way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed
to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him--he was, in
fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!--but awkward he was,
and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he
was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some
malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and
covered him with ink simply for the fun of the thing!
He did not, at this time, care very greatly for reading; he told himself
stories--long stories with enormous families in them, trains of
elephants, ropes and ropes of pearls, towers of ivory, peacocks, and
strange meals of saffron buns, roast chicken, and gingerbread. His
active, everyday concern, however, was to become a sportsman; he wished
to be the best cricketer, the best footballer, the fastest runner of his
school, and he had not--even then faintly he knew it--the remotest
chance of doing any of these things even moderately well.
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