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

up. He wouldn’t go to school, for one thing, and he’d be jolly careful who he gave nuggets to for another. He’d give nuggets to the butcher’s boy and the postman, and the man who came to tune the piano, and the chimney-sweep. He wouldn’t give any to any of his family, or any of the masters at the school. He’d just serve people out the way they served him. He just would. The road to the coast seemed rather long, and he was growing rather tired. He walked in a ditch for a change, and then scraped through a hedge and took a shortcut across a ploughed field. Dusk was falling fast, and even William’s buoyant spirits began to flag. The fortune part was all very well, but in the meantime he was cold and tired and hungry. He hadn’t yet reached the coast, much less the goldfields. Something must be done. He remembered that the boy in the story had “begged his way” to the coast. William determined to beg his. But at present there seemed nothing to beg it from, except a hawthorn hedge and a scarecrow in the field behind it. He wandered on disconsolately deciding to begin his career as a beggar at the first sign of human habitation.

At last he discovered a pair of iron gates through the dusk and, assuming an expression of patient suffering calculated to melt a heart of stone, walked up the drive. At the front door he smoothed down his hair (he had lost his cap on the way), pulled up his stockings, and rang the bell. After an interval a stout gentleman in the garb of a butler opened the door and glared ferociously up and down William.

“Please⁠—” began William plaintively.

The stout gentleman interrupted.

“If you’re the new Boots,” he said majestically, “go round to the back door. If you’re not, go away.”

He then shut the door in William’s face. William, on the top step, considered the question for a few minutes. It was dark and cold, with every prospect of becoming darker and colder. He decided to be the new Boots. He found his way round to the back door and knocked firmly. It was opened by a large woman in a print dress and apron.

“What y’ want?” she said aggressively.

“He said,” said William firmly, “to come round if I was the new Boots.”

The woman surveyed him in grim disapproval.

“You bin round to the front?” she said. “Nerve!”

Her disapproval increased to suspicion.

“Where’s your things?” she said.

“Comin’,” said William without a moment’s hesitation.

“Too tired to bring ’em with you?” she said sarcastically. “All right. Come in!”

William came in gratefully. It was a large, warm, clean kitchen. A small kitchen-maid was peeling potatoes at a sink, and a housemaid in black, with a frilled cap and apron, was powdering her nose before a glass on the wall. They both turned to stare at William.

“ ’Ere’s the new Boots,” announced Cook, “ ’is valet’s bringin’ ’is things later.”

The housemaid looked up William from his muddy boots to his untidy hair, then down William from his untidy hair to his muddy boots.

“Imperdent-lookin’ child,” she commented haughtily, returning to her task.

William decided inwardly that she was to have no share at all in the nuggets.

The kitchen-maid giggled and winked at William, with obviously friendly intent. William mentally promised her half a shipload of nuggets.

“Now, then, Smutty,” said the housemaid without turning round, “none of your sauce!”

“ ’Ad your tea?” said the cook to William. William’s spirits rose.

“No,” he said plaintively.

“All right. Sit down at the table.”

William’s spirits soared sky high.

He sat at the table and the cook put a large plate of bread and butter before him.

William set to work at once. The housemaid regarded him scornfully.

“Learnt ’is way of eatin’ at the Zoo,” she said pityingly.

The kitchen-maid giggled again and gave William another wink. William had given himself up to wholehearted epicurean enjoying of his bread and butter and took no notice of them. At this moment the butler entered.

He subjected the quite unmoved William to another long survey.

“When next you come a-hentering of this ’ouse, my boy,” he said, “kindly remember that the front door is reserved for gentry an’ the back for brats.”

William merely looked at him coldly over a hunk of bread and butter. Mentally he knocked him off the list of nugget-receivers.

The butler looked sadly round the room.

“They’re all the same,” he lamented. “Eat, eat, eat. Nothin’ but eat. Eat all day an’ eat all night. ’E’s not bin in the ’ouse two minutes an’ ’e’s at it. Eat! eat! eat! ’E’ll ’ave all the buttons bust off his uniform in a week like wot the larst one ’ad. Like eatin’ better than workin’, don’t you?” he said sarcastically to William.

“Yes, I do, too,” said William with firm conviction.

The kitchen-maid giggled again, and the housemaid gave a sigh expressive of scorn and weariness as she drew a thin pencil over her eyebrows.

“Well, if you’ve quite finished, my lord,” said the butler in ponderous irony, “I’ll show you to your room.”

William indicated that he had quite finished, and was led up to a very small bedroom. Over a chair lay a page’s uniform with the conventional row of brass buttons down the front of the coat.

“Togs,” explained the butler briefly. “Your togs. Fix ’em on quick as you can. There’s company to dinner tonight.”

William fixed them on.

“You’re smaller than wot the last one was,” said the butler critically. “They ’ang a bit loose. Never mind. With a week or two of stuffin’ you’ll ’ave most probable bust ’em, so it’s as well to ’ang loose first. Now, come on. ’Oo’s bringing over your things?”

“E⁠—a friend,” explained William.

“I suppose it is a bit too much to expeck you to carry your own parcels,” went on the butler, “in these ’ere days. Bloomin’ Bolshevist, I speck, aren’t you?”

William condescended to explain himself.

“I’m a gold-digger,” he said.

“Criky!” said the butler.

William was led down again to the kitchen.

The butler threw open a door that led to