Just William

It all began with William’s aunt, who was in a good temper that morning, and gave him a shilling for posting a letter for her and carrying her parcels from the grocer’s.

“Buy some sweets or go to the pictures,” she said carelessly, as she gave it to him.

William walked slowly down the road, gazing thoughtfully at the coin. After deep calculations, based on the fact that a shilling is the equivalent of two sixpences, he came to the conclusion that both luxuries could be indulged in.

In the matter of sweets, William frankly upheld the superiority of quantity over quality. Moreover, he knew every sweet shop within a two miles radius of his home whose proprietor added an extra sweet after the scale had descended, and he patronised these shops exclusively. With solemn face and eager eye, he always watched the process of weighing, and “stingy” shops were known and banned by him.

He wandered now to his favourite confectioner and stood outside the window for five minutes, torn between the rival attractions of Gooseberry Eyes and Marble Balls. Both were sold at 4 ounces for 2d. William never purchased more expensive luxuries. At last his frowning brow relaxed and he entered the shop.

“Sixpennoth of Gooseberry Eyes,” he said, with a slightly self-conscious air. The extent of his purchases rarely exceeded a penny.

“Hello!” said the shopkeeper, in amused surprise.

“Gotter bit of money this mornin’,” explained William carelessly, with the air of a Rothschild.

“She’s different from everybody else in the world,” stammered Robert ecstatically. “You simply couldn’t describe her. No one could!”

His mother continued to darn his socks and made no comment.

Only William, his young brother, showed interest.

“How’s she different from anyone else?” he demanded. “Is she blind or lame or sumthin’?”

Robert turned on him with exasperation.

“Oh, go and play at trains!” he said. “A child like you can’t understand anything.”

William retired with dignity to the window and listened, with interest unabated, to the rest of the conversation.

“Yes, but who is she, dear?” said their mother. “Robert, I can’t think how you get these big holes in your heels!”

Robert ran his hands wildly through his hair.

“I’ve told you who she is, Mother,” he said. “I’ve been talking about her ever since I came into the room.”

“Yes, I know, dear, but you haven’t mentioned her name or anything about her.”

“Well,” Robert spoke with an air of superhuman patience, “she’s a Miss Cannon and she’s staying with the Clives and I met her out with Mrs. Clive this morning and she introduced me and she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and she⁠—”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Brown hastily, “you told me all that.”

It was a half-holiday and William was in his bedroom making careful preparations for the afternoon. On the mantelpiece stood in readiness half a cake (the result of a successful raid on the larder) and a bottle of licorice water. This beverage was made by shaking up a piece of licorice in water. It was much patronised by the band of Outlaws to which William belonged and which met secretly every half-holiday in a disused barn about a quarter of a mile from William’s house.

So far the Outlaws had limited their activities to wrestling matches, adventure seeking, and culinary operations. The week before, they had cooked two sausages which William had taken from the larder on cook’s night out and had conveyed to the barn beneath his shirt and next his skin. Perhaps “cooked” is too euphemistic a term. To be quite accurate, they had held the sausages over a smoking fire till completely blackened, and then consumed the charred remains with the utmost relish.

William put the bottle of licorice water in one pocket and the half cake in another and was preparing to leave the house in his usual stealthy fashion⁠—through the bathroom window, down the scullery roof, and down the water-pipe hand over hand to the back garden. Even when unencumbered by the presence of a purloined half cake, William infinitely preferred this mode of exit to the simpler one of walking out of the front-door.

“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.