Mr Bostock stabs at the blackboard with a piece of chalk. 'This, George, plus this' (stab) 'equals what?' (stab stab).

Everything in his head is a blur, and George guesses wildly. 'Twelve,' he says, or, 'Seven and a half.' The boys at the front laugh, and then the farm boys join in when they realize he is wrong.

Mr Bostock sighs and shakes his head and asks Harry Charlesworth, who is always in the front row and has his hand up all the time.

'Eight,' Harry says, or, 'Thirteen and a quarter,' and Mr Bostock moves his head in George's direction, to show how stupid he has been.

One afternoon, on his way back to the Vicarage, George soils himself. His mother takes off his clothes, stands him in the bath, scrubs him down, dresses him again and takes him to Father. But George is unable to explain to his father why, though he is nearly seven years old, he has behaved like a baby in napkins.

This happens again, and then again. His parents do not punish him, but their evident disappointment in their firstborn – stupid at school, a baby on the way home – is as bad as any punishment. They discuss him over the top of his head.

'The child gets his nerves from you, Charlotte.'

'In any event, it cannot be teething.'

'We can rule out cold, since we are in September.'

'And indigestible items of food, since Horace is not affected.'

'What remains?'

'The only other cause the book suggests is fright.'

'George, are you frightened of something?'

George looks at his father, at the shiny clerical collar, at the broad, unsmiling face above it, the mouth which speaks the frequently incomprehensible truth from the pulpit of St Mark's, and the black eyes which now command the truth from him. What is he to say? He is frightened of Wallie Sharp and Sid Henshaw and some others, but that would be telling on them. In any case, it is not what he fears most. Eventually he says, 'I'm frightened of being stupid.'