Everybody wants to bat first , and as soon as he is out he bowls unless you are the better wrestler , and while you are wrestling with him the fielders have scattered to play at something else . The Gardens are noted for two kinds of cricket : boy cricket , which is real cricket with a bat , and girl cricket , which is with a racquet and the governess . Girls ca n't really play cricket , and when you are watching their futile efforts you make funny sounds at them . Nevertheless , there was a very disagreeable incident one day when some forward girls challenged David 's team , and a disturbing creature called Angela Clare sent down so many yorkers that -- However , instead of telling you the result of that regrettable match I shall pass on hurriedly to the Round Pond , which is the wheel that keeps all the gardens going . -LSB- Illustration : The Serpentine is a lovely lake , and there is a drowned forest at the bottom of it . If you peer over the edge you can see the trees all growing upside down , and they say that at night there are also drowned stars in it -RSB- It is round because it is in the very middle of the Gardens , and when you are come to it you never want to go any farther . You ca n't be good all the time at the Round Pond , however much you try . You can be good in the Broad Walk all the time , but not at the Round Pond , and the reason is that you forget , and , when you remember , you are so wet that you may as well be wetter . There are men who sail boats on the Round Pond , such big boats that they bring them in barrows , and sometimes in perambulators , and then the baby has to walk . The bow-legged children in the Gardens are those who had to walk too soon because their father needed the perambulator . You always want to have a yacht to sail on the Round Pond , and in the end your uncle gives you one ; and to carry it to the pond the first day is splendid , also to talk about it to boys who have no uncle is splendid , but soon you like to leave it at home . For the sweetest craft that slips her moorings in the Round Pond is what is called a stick-boat , because she is rather like a stick until she is in the water and you are holding the string . Then as you walk round , pulling her , you see little men running about her deck , and sails rise magically and catch the breeze , and you put in on dirty nights at snug harbours which are unknown to the lordly yachts . Night passes in a twink , and again your rakish craft noses for the wind , whales spout , you glide over buried cities , and have brushes with pirates , and cast anchor on coral isles . You are a solitary boy while all this is taking place , for two boys together can not adventure far upon the Round Pond , and though you may talk to yourself throughout the voyage , giving orders and executing them with despatch , you know not , when it is time to go home , where you have been or what swelled your sails ; your treasure-trove is all locked away in your hold , so to speak , which will be opened , perhaps , by another little boy many years afterwards . But those yachts have nothing in their hold . Does any one return to this haunt of his youth because of the yachts that used to sail it ? Oh no . It is the stick-boat that is freighted with memories . The yachts are toys , their owner a fresh-water mariner ; they can cross and recross a pond only while the stick-boat goes to sea .
You yachtsmen with your wands , who think we are all there to gaze on you , your ships are only accidents of this place , and were they all to be boarded and sunk by the ducks , the real business of the Round XXXXX would be carried on as usual .
David Gardens Pond Serpentine despatch drowned moorings perambulator perambulators twink