The present author was chosen to be the one.
When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what
you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you
were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of
yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was
glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the
Oswald that generally exists hated being out of the games. Yet the whole
Oswald, both the best and the ordinary, was pleased that he was the one
chosen to be a detachment of consolation.
He went out under the great archway, and as he went he heard the games
beginning again. This made him feel noble, and yet he was ashamed of
feeling it. Your feelings are a beastly nuisance, if once you begin to
let yourself think about them. Oswald soon saw the broken boots of the
boy whose father was in jail so nobody would play with him, standing on
the stones near the top of the wall where it was broken to match the
boots.