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

displayed his mutilated finger. “I only caught it yesterday. It oughter learn all right today,” he added hopefully.

Her intense disappointment, when the only trace of the field-mouse that could be found was the cardboard box with a hole gnawed at one corner, drew William’s heart to her still more.

He avoided Henry, Douglas and Ginger. Henry, Douglas and Ginger had sworn to be at the church door to watch William descend from the carriage in the glory of his white satin apparel, and William felt that friendship could not stand the strain.

He sat with Dorita on the cold and perilous perch of the garden wall and discussed Cousin Sybil and the wedding. Dorita’s language delighted and fascinated William.

“She’s a soppy old loony,” she would remark sweetly, shaking her dark curls. “The soppiest old loony you’d see in any old place on this old earth, you betcher life! She’s made of sop. I wouldn’t be found dead in a ditch with her⁠—wouldn’t touch her with the butt-end of a bargepole. She’s an assified cow, she is. Humph!”

“Those children are a leetle disappointing as regards character⁠—to a child lover like myself,” confided Miss Grant to her intellectual fiancé. “I’ve tried to sound their depths, but there are no depths to sound. There is none of the mystery, the glamour, the ‘clouds of glory’ about them. They are so⁠—so material.”

The day of the ordeal drew nearer and nearer, and William’s spirits sank lower and lower. His life seemed to stretch before him⁠—youth, manhood, and old age⁠—dreary and desolate, filled only with humiliation and shame. His prestige and reputation would be blasted forever. He would no longer be William⁠—the Red Indian, the pirate, the daredevil. He would simply be the Boy Who Went to a Wedding Dressed in White Satin. Evidently there would be a surging crowd of small boys at the church door. Every boy for miles round who knew William even by sight had volunteered the information that he would be there. William was to ride with Dorita and Michael in the bride’s carriage. In imagination he already descended from the carriage and heard the chorus of jeers. His cheeks grew hot at the thought. His life for years afterwards would consist solely in the avenging of insults. He followed the figure of the blushing bride-to-be with a baleful glare. In his worst moments he contemplated murder. The violence of his outburst when his mother mildly suggested a wedding present to the bride from her page and maid of honour horrified her.

“I’m bein’ made look ridiclus all the rest of my life,” he ended. “I’m not givin’ her no present. I know what I’d like to give her,” he added darkly.

“Yes, and I do, too.”

Mrs. Brown forebore to question further.

The day of the wedding dawned coldly bright and sunny. William’s expressions of agony and complaints of various startling symptoms of serious illnesses were ignored by his experienced family circle.

Michael was dressed first of the three in his minute white satin suit and sent down into the morning-room to play quietly. Then an unwilling William was captured from the darkest recess of the stable and dragged pale and protesting to the slaughter.

“Yes, an’ I’ll die pretty soon, prob’ly,” he said pathetically, “and then p’r’aps you’ll be a bit sorry, an’ I shan’t care.”

In Michael there survived two of the instincts of primitive man, the instinct of foraging for food and that of concealing it from his enemies when found. Earlier in the day he had paid a visit to the kitchen and found it empty. Upon the table lay a pound of butter and a large bag of oranges. These he had promptly confiscated and, with a fear of interruption born of experience, he had retired with them under the table in the morning-room. Before he could begin his feast he had been called upstairs to be dressed for the ceremony. On his return (immaculate in white satin) he found to his joy that his treasure trove had not been discovered. He began on the butter first. What he could not eat he smeared over his face and curly hair. Then he felt a sudden compunction and tried to remove all traces of the crime by rubbing his face and hair violently with a woolly mat. Then he sat down on the Chesterfield and began the oranges. They were very yellow and juicy and rather overripe. He crammed them into his mouth with both little fat hands at once. He was well aware, even at his tender years, that life’s sweetest joys come soonest to an end. Orange juice mingled with wool fluff and butter on his small round face. It trickled down his cheeks and fell on to his white lace collar. His mouth and the region round it were completely yellow. He had emptied the oranges out of the bag all around him on the seat. He was sitting in a pool of juice. His suit was covered with it, mingled with pips and skin, and still he ate on.

His first interruption was William and Dorita, who came slowly downstairs holding hands in silent sympathy, two gleaming figures in white satin. They walked to the end of the room. They also had been sent to the morning-room with orders to “play quietly” until summoned.

“Play?” William had echoed coldly. “I don’t feel much like playing.”

They stared at Michael, openmouthed and speechless. Lumps of butter and bits of wool stuck in his curls and adhered to the upper portion of his face. They had been washed away from the lower portion of it by orange juice. His suit was almost covered with it. Behind he was saturated with it.

“Crumbs!” said William at last.

“You’ll catch it,” remarked his sister.

Michael retreated hastily from the scene of his misdeeds.

“Mickyth good now,” he lisped deprecatingly.

They looked at the seat he had left⁠—a pool of crushed orange fragments and juice. Then they looked at each other.

“He’ll not be able to go,” said Dorita slowly.

Again they looked at the empty orange-covered