The damage was not terribly serious, though perhaps it might have been thought so if examined by methods available in more recent times—the year of the accident was 1926, so that he was now thirty-seven. Nothing was broken; no distortion of any kind was visible; Richard had no limp (or very little); he suffered no regular or persistent pain; he could walk quite well and endure fatigue as well as the next boy, up to a point. There was just some slight displacement which made it difficult for him to hit or kick really hard and straight, or balance with complete steadiness. At first this not very obvious disability was attributed not to his accident but to general weakness, for he was not very tall, and somewhat slight in frame. But one day in his early teens the truth broke upon him. It was winter; a bright, cold, hard, sparkling winter’s day in the Christmas holidays. A light coating of snow covered the ground, and the outlines of the interlocking West Riding hills made a delicious white pattern against the clear blue sky.
