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

heard moving about in her room, but that was all. A wild hope came to him that, given a little time, she might forget the incident.

“Let’s count the money⁠—” said Henry at last.

They counted.

“Four an’ six!” screamed William. “Four an’ six! Jolly good, I should say! An’ it would only have been about two shillings without Aunt Emily, an’ I thought of her, didn’t I? I guess you can all be jolly grateful to me.”

“All right,” said Henry unkindly. “I’m not envying you, am I? You’re welcome to it when she tells your father.”

And William’s proud spirits dropped.

Then came the opening of the fateful door and heavy steps descending the stairs.

William’s mother had returned from her weekly visit to her friend. She was placing her umbrella in the stand as Aunt Emily, hatted and coated and carrying a bag, descended. William’s father had just awakened from his peaceful Sunday afternoon slumber, and, hearing his wife, had come into the hall.

Aunt Emily fixed her eye upon him.

“Will you be good enough to procure a conveyance?” she said. “After the indignities to which I have been subjected in this house I refuse to remain in it a moment longer.”

Quivering with indignation she gave details of the indignities to which she had been subjected. William’s mother pleaded, apologised, coaxed. William’s father went quietly out to procure a conveyance. When he returned she was still talking in the hall.

“A crowd of vulgar little boys,” she was saying, “and horrible indecent placards all over the room.”

He carried her bag down to the cab.

“And me in my state of health,” she said as she followed him. From the cab she gave her parting shot.

“And if this horrible thing hadn’t happened, I might have stayed with you all the winter and perhaps part of the spring.”

William’s father wiped his brow with his handkerchief as the cab drove off.

“How dreadful!” said his wife, but she avoided meeting his eye. “It’s⁠—it’s disgraceful of William,” she went on with sudden spirit. “You must speak to him.”

“I will,” said his father determinedly. “William!” he shouted sternly from the hall.

William’s heart sank.

“She’s told,” he murmured, his last hope gone.

“You’d better go and get it over,” advised Henry.

“William!” repeated the voice still more fiercely.

Henry moved nearer the window, prepared for instant flight if the voice’s owner should follow it up the stairs.

“Go on,” he urged. “He’ll only come up for you.”

William slowly removed the barricade and descended the stairs. He had remembered to take off the crown and dressing gown, but his one-sided moustache still hung limply over his mouth.

His father was standing in the hall.

“What’s that horrible thing on your face?” he began.

“Whiskers,” answered William laconically.

His father accepted the explanation.

“Is it true,” he went on, “that you actually took your friends into your aunt’s room without permission and hung vulgar placards around it?”

William glanced up into his father’s face and suddenly took hope. Mr. Brown was no actor.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“It’s disgraceful,” said Mr. Brown, “disgraceful! That’s all.”

But it was not quite all. Something hard and round slipped into William’s hand. He ran lightly upstairs.

“Hello!” said Henry, surprised. “That’s not taken long. What⁠—”

William opened his hand and showed something that shone upon his extended palm.

“Look!” he said. “Crumbs! Look!” It was a bright half-crown.

VI A Question of Grammar

It was raining. It had been raining all morning. William was intensely bored with his family.

“What can I do?” he demanded of his father for the tenth time.

“Nothing!” said his father fiercely from behind his newspaper.

William followed his mother into the kitchen.

“What can I do?” he said plaintively.

“Couldn’t you just sit quietly?” suggested his mother.

“That’s not doin’ anything,” William said. “I could sit quietly all day,” he went on aggressively, “if I wanted.”

“But you never do.”

“No, ’cause there wouldn’t be any sense in it, would there?”

“Couldn’t you read or draw or something?”

“No, that’s lessons. That’s not doin’ anything!”

“I could teach you to knit if you like.”

With one crushing glance William left her.

He went to the drawing-room, where his sister Ethel was knitting a jumper and talking to a friend.

“And I heard her say to him⁠—” she was saying. She broke off with the sigh of a patient martyr as William came in. He sat down and glared at her. She exchanged a glance of resigned exasperation with her friend.

“What are you doing, William?” said the friend sweetly.

“Nothin’,” said William with a scowl.

“Shut the door after you when you go out, won’t you, William?” said Ethel equally sweetly.

William at that insult rose with dignity and went to the door. At the door he turned.

“I wun’t stay here now,” he said with slow contempt, “not even if⁠—even if⁠—even if,” he paused to consider the most remote contingency, “not even if you wanted me,” he said at last emphatically.

He shut the door behind him and his expression relaxed into a sardonic smile.

“I bet they feel small!” he said to the umbrella-stand.

He went to the library, where his seventeen-year-old brother Robert was showing off his new rifle to a friend.

“You see⁠—” he was saying, then, catching sight of William’s face round the door, “Oh, get out!”

William got out.

He returned to his mother in the kitchen with a still more jaundiced view of life. It was still raining. His mother was looking at the tradesmen’s books.

“Can I go out?” he said gloomily.

“No, of course not. It’s pouring.”

“I don’t mind rain.”

“Don’t be silly.”

William considered that few boys in the whole world were handicapped by more unsympathetic parents than he.

“Why,” he said pathetically, “have they got friends in an’ me not?”

“I suppose you didn’t think of asking anyone,” she said calmly.

“Well, can I have someone now?”

“No, it’s too late,” said Mrs. Brown, raising her head from the butcher’s book and murmuring “ten and elevenpence” to herself.

“Well, when can I?”

She raised a harassed face.

“William, do be quiet! Any time, if you ask. Eighteen and twopence.”

“Can I have lots?”

“Oh, go and ask your father.”

William went out.

He returned to the dining-room, where his father was still reading a paper. The sigh with which