He could run like a young deer.

Though despised, could he not outrun any of the youth in Budge Street?
He took his place in the line of competing children.

Far away in the grassy distance were two men holding a stretched string.

On one side of him was a tubby boy with a freckled face and an amorphous nose on which the perspiration beaded; on the other a lank, consumptive creature, in Eton collar and red tie and a sprig of sweet William in his buttonhole, a very superior person.
Neither of them desired his propinquity.

They tried to hustle him from the line.