Just William - Richmal Crompton (have you read this book .TXT) 📗

William was feeling embittered with life in general. He was passing through one of his not infrequent periods of unpopularity. The climax had come with the gift of sixpence bestowed on him by a timid aunt, who hoped thus to purchase his goodwill. With the sixpence he had bought a balloon adorned with the legs and head of a duck fashioned in cardboard. This could be blown up to its fullest extent and then left to subside. It took several minutes to subside, and during those minutes it emitted a long-drawn-out and high-pitched groan. The advantage of this was obvious. William could blow it up to its fullest extent in private and leave it to subside in public concealed beneath his coat. While this was going on William looked round as though in bewildered astonishment. He inflated it before he went to breakfast. He then held it firmly and secretly so as to keep it inflated till he was sitting at the table. Then he let it subside. His mother knocked over a cup of coffee, and his father cut himself with the bread knife. Ethel, his elder sister, indulged in a mild form of nervous breakdown. William sat with a face of startled innocence. But nothing enraged his family so much as William’s expression of innocence. They fell upon him, and he defended himself as well as he could. Yes, he was holding the balloon under the table. Well, he’d blown it up some time ago. He couldn’t keep it blown up forever. He had to let the air out some time. He couldn’t help it making a noise when the air went out. It was the way it was made. He hadn’t made it. He set off to school with an air of injured innocence⁠—and the balloon. Observing an elderly and irascible-looking gentleman in front of him, he went a few steps down a back street, blew up his balloon and held it tightly under his coat. Then, when abreast of the old gentleman, he let it off. The old gentleman gave a leap into the air and glared fiercely around. He glanced at the small virtuous-looking schoolboy with obviously no instrument of torture at his lips, and then concentrated his glare of fury and suspicion on the upper windows. William hastened on to the next pedestrian. He had quite a happy walk to school.

School was at first equally successful. William opened his desk, hastily inflated his balloon, closed his desk, then gazed round with his practised expression of horrified astonishment at what followed. He drove the French master to distraction.

“Step out ’oo makes the noise,” he screamed.

No one stepped out, and the noise continued at intervals.

The mathematics master finally discovered and confiscated the balloon.

“I hope,” said the father at lunch, “that they’ve taken away that infernal machine of yours.”

William replied sadly that they had. He added that some people didn’t seem to think it was stealing to take other people’s things.

“Then we may look forward to a little peace this evening?” said the father politely. “Not that it matters to me, as I’m going out to dinner. The only thing that relieves the tedium of going out to dinner is the fact that for a short time one has a rest from William.”

William acknowledged the compliment by a scowl and a mysterious muttered remark to the effect that some people were always at him.

During preparation in afternoon school he read a storybook kindly lent him by his next-door neighbour. It was not because he had no work to do that William read a storybook in preparation. It was a mark of defiance to the world in general. It was also a very interesting storybook. It opened with the hero as a small boy misunderstood and ill-treated by everyone around him. Then he ran away. He went to sea, and in a few years made an immense fortune in the goldfields. He returned in the last chapter and forgave his family and presented them with a noble mansion and several shiploads of gold. The idea impressed William⁠—all except the end part. He thought he’d prefer to have the noble mansion himself and pay rare visits to his family, during which he would listen to their humble apologies, and perhaps give them a nugget or two, but not very much⁠—certainly not much to Ethel. He wasn’t sure whether he’d ever really forgive them. He’d have rooms full of squeaky balloons and trumpets in his house anyway, and he’d keep caterpillars and white rats all over the place too⁠—things they made such a fuss about in their old house⁠—and he’d always go about in dirty boots, and he’d never brush his hair or wash, and he’d keep dozens of motorcars, and he wouldn’t let Ethel go out in any of them. He was roused from this enthralling daydream by the discovery and confiscation of his storybook by the master in charge, and the subsequent fury of its owner. In order adequately to express his annoyance, he dropped a little ball of blotting-paper soaked in ink down William’s back. William, on attempting retaliation, was sentenced to stay in half an hour after school. He returned gloomily to his history book (upside down) and his misanthropic view of life. He compared himself bitterly with the hero of the storybook and decided not to waste another moment of his life in uncongenial surroundings. He made a firm determination to run away as soon as he was released from school.

He walked briskly down the road away from the village. In his pocket reposed the balloon. He had made the cheering discovery that the mathematics master had left it on his desk, so he had joyfully taken it again into his possession. He thought he might reach the coast before night, and get to the goldfields before next week. He didn’t suppose it took long to make a fortune there. He might be back before next Christmas and⁠—crumbs! he’d jolly well make people sit