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

his father greeted his entrance was not one of relief.

“If you’ve come to ask questions⁠—” he began threateningly.

“I haven’t,” said William quickly. “Father, when you’re all away on Saturday, can I have a party?”

“No, of course not,” said his father irritably. “Can’t you do something?”

William, goaded to desperation, burst into a flood of eloquence.

“The sort of things I want to do they don’t want me to do an’ the sort of things I don’t want to do they want me to do. Mother said to knit. Knit!”

His scorn and fury were indescribable. His father looked out of the window.

“Thank Heaven, it’s stopped raining! Go out!”

William went out.

There were some quite interesting things to do outside. In the road there were puddles, and the sensation of walking through a puddle, as every boy knows, is a very pleasant one. The hedges, when shaken, sent quite a shower bath upon the shaker, which also is a pleasant sensation. The ditch was full and there was the thrill of seeing how often one could jump across it without going in. One went in more often than not. It is also fascinating to walk in mud, scraping it along with one’s boots. William’s spirits rose, but he could not shake off the idea of the party. Quite suddenly he wanted to have a party and he wanted to have it on Saturday. His family would be away on Saturday. They were going to spend the day with an aunt. Aunts rarely included William in their invitation.

He came home wet and dirty and cheerful. He approached his father warily.

“Did you say I could have a party, father?” he said casually.

“No, I did not,” said Mr. Brown firmly.

William let the matter rest for the present.

He spent most of the English Grammar class in school next morning considering it. There was a great deal to be said for a party in the absence of one’s parents and grown-up brother and sister. He’d like to ask George and Ginger and Henry and Douglas and⁠—and⁠—and⁠—heaps of them. He’d like to ask them all. “They” were the whole class⁠—thirty in number.

“What have I just been saying, William?”

William sighed. That was the foolish sort of question that schoolmistresses were always asking. They ought to know themselves what they’d just been saying better than anyone. He never knew. Why were they always asking him? He looked blank. Then:

“Was it anythin’ about participles?” He remembered something vaguely about participles, but it mightn’t have been today.

Miss Jones groaned.

“That was ever so long ago, William,” she said. “You’ve not been attending.”

William cleared his throat with a certain dignity and made no answer.

“Tell him, Henry.”

Henry ceased his enthralling occupation of trying to push a fly into his inkwell with his nib and answered mechanically:

“Two negatives make an affirmative.”

“Yes. Say that, William.”

William repeated it without betraying any great interest in the fact.

“Yes. What’s a negative, William?”

William sighed.

“Somethin’ about photographs?” he said obligingly.

“No,” snapped Miss Jones. She found William and the heat (William particularly) rather trying.

“It’s ‘no’ and ‘not.’ And an affirmative is ‘yes.’ ”

“Oh,” said William politely.

“So two ‘nos’ and ‘nots’ mean ‘yes,’ if they’re in the same sentence. If you said ‘There’s not no money in the box’ you mean there is.”

William considered.

He said “Oh” again.

Then he seemed suddenly to become intelligent.

“Then,” he said, “if you say ‘no’ and ‘not’ in the same sentence does it mean ‘yes’?”

“Certainly.”

William smiled.

William’s smile was a rare thing.

“Thank you,” he said.

Miss Jones was quite touched. “It’s all right, William,” she said, “I’m glad you’re beginning to take an interest in your work.”

William was murmuring to himself.

“ ‘No, of course not’ and ‘No, I did not’ and a ‘no’ an’ a ‘not’ mean a ‘yes,’ so he meant ‘yes, of course’ and ‘yes, I did.’ ”

He waited till the Friday before he gave his invitations with a casual air.

“My folks is goin’ away tomorrow an’ they said I could have a few fren’s in to tea. Can you come? Tell your mother they said jus’ to come an’ not bother to write.”

He was a born strategist. Not one of his friends’ parents guessed the true state of affairs. When William’s conscience (that curious organ) rose to reproach him, he said to it firmly:

“He said I could. He said ‘Yes, of course.’ He said ‘Yes, I did.’ ”

He asked them all. He thought that while you are having a party you might as well have a big one. He hinted darkly at unrestrained joy and mirth. They all accepted the invitation.

William’s mother took an anxious farewell of him on Saturday morning.

“You don’t mind being left, darling, do you?”

“No, mother,” said William with perfect truth.

“You won’t do anything we’ve told you not to, will you?”

“No, mother. Only things you’ve said ‘yes’ to.”

Cook and Jane had long looked forward to this day. There would be very little to do in the house and as far as William was concerned they hoped for the best.

William was out all the morning. At lunch he was ominously quiet and polite. Jane decided to go with her young man to the pictures.

Cook said she didn’t mind being left, as “that Master William” had gone out and there seemed to be no prospect of his return before teatime.

So Jane went to the pictures.

About three o’clock the postman came and cook went to the door for the letters. Then she stood gazing down the road as though transfixed.

William had collected his guests en route. He was bringing them joyfully home with him. Clean and starched and prim had they issued from their homes, but they had grown hilarious under William’s benign influence. They had acquired sticks and stones and old tins from the ditches as they came along. They perceived from William’s general attitude towards it that it was no ordinary party. They were a happy crowd. William headed them with a trumpet.

They trooped in at the garden gate. Cook, pale and speechless, watched them. Then her speechlessness departed.

“You’re not coming in here!” she said fiercely. “What’ve you brought all those boys cluttering up the