David Blaize by E.F. Benson — Read

David was swaggering about-neither more nor less-in the new school blazer and eleven-cap on the morning of the cricket-match against Eagles School, which was the great event of the entire year. But, as a matter of fact, this swagger was but a hollow show, and though he was completely conscious of being an object of envy and admiration in the eyes of the small boys, or, indeed, of anybody who was not in the eleven, he did not envy himself in the smallest degree. To begin with, he had that which in later life is called an attack of nerves (though at present it came under the general comprehensive head of "feeling beastly") which made his mouth dry and his hands damp and his inside empty but not hungry. And, to make this worse, his father had announced his intention of coming down to see the match. That might not sound tragical, but to David it was the cause of awful apprehensions, which require a true sympathy with the sensibilities attaching to the age of thirteen fully to appreciate.

To begin with, his father was an Archdeacon, and since he wore a shovel-hat and odd, black, wrinkled gaiters even when, as during last summer holidays, he climbed the hills in the Lake District with a small edition of the poems of Wordsworth in his pocket, from which he read aloud at frequent halting-places, David had not allowed himself to hope that on the present inauspicious occasion he would be dressed like any other person, and so escape the biting criticisms that his curious garments would be sure to call forth. But there was much worse than this, for his father was going to stay with the Head over Sunday, and was to preach in school chapel in the evening.