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

brush thickly smeared with blacking and pushed back Mr. Biggs’s face with it.

There was a moment’s silence of sheer horror, then Mr. Biggs hurled himself furiously upon William.⁠ ⁠…

In the dining-room sat the master and mistress of the house and their guest.

“Did the new Boots arrive?” said the master to his wife.

“Yes,” she said.

“Any good?” he said.

“He doesn’t seem to have impressed Biggs very favourably,” she said, “but they never do.”

“The human boy,” said the guest, “is given us as a discipline. I possess one. Though he is my own son, I find it difficult to describe the atmosphere of peace and relief that pervades the house when he is out of it.”

“I’d like to meet your son,” said the host.

“You probably will, sooner or later,” said the guest gloomily. “Everyone in the neighbourhood meets him sooner or later. He does not hide his light under a bushel. Personally, I prefer people who haven’t met him. They can’t judge me by him.”

At this moment the butler came in with a note.

“No answer,” he said, and departed with his slow dignity.

“Excuse me,” said the lady as she opened it, “it’s from my sister. ‘I hope,’ she read, ‘that you aren’t inconvenienced much by the non-arrival of the Boots I engaged for you. He’s got “flu.” ’ But he’s come,” she said wonderingly.

There came the sound of an angry shout, a distant scream and the clattering of heavy running footsteps⁠ ⁠… growing nearer.⁠ ⁠…

“A revolution, I expect,” said the guest wearily. “The Reds are upon us.”

At that moment the door was burst open and in rushed a boy with a blacking brush in one hand and an inflated balloon in the other. He was much dishevelled, with three buttons off the front of his uniform, and his face streaked with knife powder and blacking. Behind him ran a fat butler, his face purple with fury beneath a large smear of blacking. The boy rushed round the table, slipped on the polished floor, clutched desperately at the neck of the guest, bringing both guest and chair down upon the floor beside him. In a sudden silence of utter paralysed horror, guest and boy sat on the floor and stared at each other. Then the boy’s nerveless hand relaxed its hold upon the balloon, which had somehow or other survived the vicissitudes of the flight, and a shrill squeak rang through the silence of the room.

The master and mistress of the house sat looking round in dazed astonishment.

As the guest looked at the boy there appeared on his countenance amazement, then incredulity, and finally frozen horror. As the boy looked at the guest there appeared on his countenance amazement, then incredulity and finally blank dejection.

“Good Lord!” said the guest, “it’s William!”

“Oh, crumbs!” said the Boots, “it’s father!”

IV The Fall of the Idol

William was bored. He sat at his desk in the sunny schoolroom and gazed dispassionately at a row of figures on the blackboard.

“It isn’t sense,” he murmured scornfully.

Miss Drew was also bored, but, unlike William, she tried to hide the fact.

“If the interest on a hundred pounds for one year is five pounds,” she said wearily, then, “William Brown, do sit up and don’t look so stupid!”

William changed his position from that of lolling over one side of his desk to that of lolling over the other, and began to justify himself.

“Well, I can’t unnerstand any of it. It’s enough to make anyone look stupid when he can’t unnerstand any of it. I can’t think why people go on givin’ people bits of money for givin’ ’em lots of money and go on an’ on doin’ it. It dun’t seem sense. Anyone’s a mug for givin’ anyone a hundred pounds just ’cause he says he’ll go on givin’ him five pounds and go on stickin’ to his hundred pounds. How’s he to know he will? Well,” he warmed to his subject, “what’s to stop him not givin’ any five pounds once he’s got hold of the hundred pounds an’ goin’ on stickin’ to the hundred pounds⁠—”

Miss Drew checked him by a slim, upraised hand.

“William,” she said patiently, “just listen to me. Now suppose,” her eyes roved round the room and settled on a small red-haired boy, “suppose that Eric wanted a hundred pounds for something and you lent it to him⁠—”

“I wun’t lend Eric a hundred pounds,” he said firmly, “ ’cause I ha’n’t got it. I’ve only got 3½d, an’ I wun’t lend that to Eric, ’cause I’m not such a mug, ’cause I lent him my mouth-organ once an’ he bit a bit off an’⁠—”

Miss Drew interrupted sharply. Teaching on a hot afternoon is rather trying.

“You’d better stay in after school, William, and I’ll explain.”

William scowled, emitted his monosyllable of scornful disdain “Huh!” and relapsed into gloom.

He brightened, however, on remembering a lizard he had caught on the way to school, and drew it from its hiding-place in his pocket. But the lizard had abandoned the unequal struggle for existence among the stones, top, penknife, bits of putty, and other small objects that inhabited William’s pocket. The housing problem had been too much for it.

William in disgust shrouded the remains in blotting paper, and disposed of it in his neighbour’s ink-pot. The neighbour protested and an enlivening scrimmage ensued.

Finally the lizard was dropped down the neck of an inveterate enemy of William’s in the next row, and was extracted only with the help of obliging friends. Threats of vengeance followed, couched in bloodcurdling terms, and written on blotting-paper.

Meanwhile Miss Drew explained Simple Practice to a small but earnest coterie of admirers in the front row. And William, in the back row, whiled away the hours for which his father paid the education authorities a substantial sum.

But his turn was to come.

At the end of afternoon school one by one the class departed, leaving William only nonchalantly chewing an india-rubber and glaring at Miss Drew.

“Now, William.”

Miss Drew was severely patient.

William went up to the platform and stood by her desk.

“You see, if someone