They’re lining up now,’ she told him, knowing he would understand he was being summoned to the ritual of ‘Doc chits’ which was routine practice on the second day of term.‘Doc chits’ were the clean-bill-of-health certificates each boy was required to bring from home, to be checked by Dr. Wales and filed by Verity for reference. They were documents which had a genius for disappearing en route or of offering themselves as the ideal raw material of paper darts, and it was always a major triumph for Verity when, at the end of several arduous hours, the number of names checked in tallied with the number of certificates for filing.The morning took on its accustomed pattern. Bob Wales arrived, tousling a head here, feinting with a body-blow there, on his way through the queue and making his stock joke to Verity. ‘Look fighting fit to me. Why do we bother? Not a measle nor a mump nor a chicken-pox in sight among the lot of ’em.’ To which she replied with her usual ‘I should hope not indeed!’ before they set companionably to work.She had known Bob for years.
