A hoop is being held upright for him. "A hoop" mutters Howard. He wriggles back from it. "A yellow plastic hoop." In the parlour, the chairs have been collected and crowded in a pile at one end of the room. The table has been pushed back against the wall (Howard raises his eyebrows at this, for the table is cumbersome and they have gone to some trouble) and onto the table has been lifted the standard-lamp. He looks up. And above him the family have arranged themselves about this standard-lamp. There! His father is slapping his thighs, then pointing at the hoop, then jerking his chin. And there squat his two younger brothers, bending low, hands on knees, shouting "Whoosh! Whoosh!" Grandmother, behind them, tilts her old-orange head up to the ceiling, rubs her hands and laughs. The only possibly sympathetic face he can see, is his mother's, for she wears a concerned expression, averts her eyes and bites her lip.
His friends are there. They perch on more furniture (a sideboard and something Howard doesn't recognise for it's been turned upside-down) which has been pushed to the wall opposite the table with its lamp-clutching family. His friends stand in a line, like bar-room boys, leaning on their elbows against the parlour wall, and he has no time to scrutinise them. Howard whimpers. He rolls onto his back, curls up his limbs, and squirms from one side to the other inviting play instead. Even the postman is there (he now sees) urged to come inside and witness Howard's performance; he's in his uniform, encouraging Howard with shouts and beating his postman's cap against his leg.
The narrow space between the two piles of furniture is cunning - the only way forward is to jump this hoop. But Howard, undecided whether to approach the contraption, walks on his toes, wiggles his haunches, and looks up into the circle of faces. The faces begin to plead and complain. Howard treads forward hesitantly, ducking his head and trembling, raises his foot then sets it down again on the same spot. It is a hoop: and not a stick. Now a stick is easy. What is the point of jumping sticks? Around him he sees so many pointless lives jumping sticks and he's in the habit of dismissing those people as stupid. Howard will not jump a stick: up to now, that has been his party trick. He can amuse the others with his refusals. He can duck beneath it, or skirt round. But a hoop is a different level of problem; and a cold fear comes over him.
This time, Howard cannot immerse himself in this question of stupidity; a diversionary question he now realises; a blinker; this time there is only one way to move on and that is to jump the hoop - Howard had seen that at the first glance. He is stuck to the spot. Horrible! That stick, bent round (what fiendish cunning) until the ends meet, transformed into a hoop and presented to him without warning. Horrible!
The postman is getting impatient. He jumps down and grips Howard by the ears, pulls Howard's head to his chest and, walking backwards, drags him towards the hoop. Howard sees his mother smile at last, smile and look at the faces around her. He straightens his legs out in front of him and is dragged forward on his heels. Howard would have tired the postman, so he assures himself afterwards, and escaped were it not for the two pairs of hands which suddenly hold him by the rear and, with one overwhelming shove, push him forward to the line where his instinct forces him to spring upwards and ahead. He gently hops through the ring and lands with a plop.
His friends rush forward from the wall. His mother claps her hands loudly and calls "Hurrah! Hurrah!" After Howard's father has, rather solemnly Howard thinks, chucked him under the chin and laughed, the others overlooking his unease, beam down with pleasure upon him as if he had had no help at all, and was quite entitled to lap up all the credit for himself.
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