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"Why; that's out of play," answered East. "You see this gravel-walk running down all along this side of the playing-ground, and the line of elms opposite on the other? Well, they're the bounds. As soon as the ball gets past them, it's in touch, and out of play.
Soon, hearing the loud mockery and derisive laughter of his enemies, he hardened his heart and went out against them with these his friends, and drove them over the whole course of the playing-ground, and, hard by the north goal, he brake the battle upon them and they fled.
Like a swarm of locusts they are down on it, and quickly every blade of grass disappears, "kicked off" as if by magic. Old walking-sticks, pieces of lath or old coats and waistcoats serve as goal-posts. Touch-lines they have none, one playing-ground runs across the other, and a dozen teams are soon hard at it. They have no caps to distinguish them, no jerseys or knickers of bright hues.
"Huzoor!" he said anxiously, and Shere Ali turned upon him with an imperious word. "Silence, dog!" he cried. "Stand apart. I wish to be alone." His eyes were on the little church with the trees and the wall girding it in. At the side a green meadow with high trees, had the look of a playing-ground the playing-ground of some great public school in England.
Now the sons of Thord, Hialti and Thorbiorn Angle, were the chief men in this sport; Thorbiorn Angle was boisterous beyond measure, and drove men hard and fast to the place of the sports, and every man must needs go whereas his will was; and he would take this man and that by the hands and drag him forth unto the playing-ground.
On exceptional holidays, when amnesty was proclaimed and we got a few hours of freedom, we shared in none of the popular diversions of the school. Aliens from the pleasures enjoyed by the others, we were outcasts, sitting forlorn under a tree in the playing-ground. The Poet-and-Pythagoras formed an exception and led a life apart from the life of the rest.
But that time is certainly a long way off, and we can still for thousands and thousands of years enjoy ourselves on this dear old playing-ground, just as it is." That is at once a plain rejection of perfectibility, and an opinion that intellectual development is no highroad to the gates of a golden city.
Generally there was a strong breeze on this point, but to-day the west was breathing its gentlest, warm upon the cheek. 'Well, it has gone, Hubert said. 'May will have free playing-ground. 'In one sense, replied the vicar, 'I fear it will never be gone. Its influence on the life of the people in Wanley and in some of the farms about has been graver than you imagine.
More obvious tokens of child-life were the swings nailed to the lintels of a few doors, in which, despite the cold, toothless babes swayed like monkeys on a branch. But the Square, with its broad area of quadrangular pavement, was an ideal playing-ground for children, since other animals came not within its precincts, except an inquisitive dog or a local cat.
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