ost modest of stout and
hearty doctors, he was always willing himself to testify to the
largeness of his personality. He dearly loved cricket, he would tell
you, for he had been a cricketer himself and seen many worse; and he
dearly loved boys, for he had been a boy himself and never seen any
worse: so, where there was a boys' cricket match, there, old man,
you would find Dr. Chapman. Besides, when boys played cricket, it
was well to have a doctor on the field, and he was a doctor and had
never met a better. Would you have a cigar? All tobacco, in his
opinion, led to the overthrow of body and soul--believe him; it
did--but you would never see him without a cigar. Not he!

Such was Chappy, the medicine man. He was right, about the cigar. As
I figure him in my mind, the things that I immediately associate
with his stout, jolly presence are a chewed cigar drooping from his
mouth and a huge white waistcoat soiled by the tumbled ash. I sum
him up as a genial soul whose religion was to seek comfort, to find
popularity a comfortable thing, and to love popularity among young
things as the most comfortable of all. And, if that last dogma of
his be not Heaven's truth, then my outlook on life is all wrong, and
this book's a failure!

As Radley placed his muscular frame in the deck-chair, Chappy
greeted him with these regrettable remarks: "Hallo, Radley, aren't
you dead yet? How the devil are you? My word, how you've grown!"

The match started, Doe and our captain opening the Kensingtowe
innings. I left the other boys and lay down upon the grass a little
behind Radley's chair. Converging reasons led me there: one--I
desired that my old friends, the Suckers, should know of my intimacy
with S.T. Radley, of Middlesex; two--I felt Chappy's conversation
would certainly be entertaining; and three--I should soon have to go
in to bat, and was feeling too nervous to talk to offensively happy
boys who were unworried by such imminent publicity.

"So they've sent us a cricketer in young Doe," Radley was saying to
Dr. Chapman.

Chappy turned in his chair, which creaked alarmingly, and composed
himself to talk comfortably.

"Oh, the Gray Doe--yes, charming little squirt--best bat the Nursery
had last year. And, though nobody but myself recognised it, the Gem
was the best bowler."

"The Gem?" queried Radley. "Who was the 'Gem'?"

"Don't you know the Gem? Why, Ray, the little snipe with eyes
something between a diamond and a turquoise.