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"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.
"h.e.l.lo!" 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.
CHAPTER 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 hara.s.sed face.
"William, do be quiet! Any time, if you ask. Eighteen and twopence."
