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"He's a butcher's boy, William! You _can't_ have him?"
"Well, who _can_ I have?"
"Johnnie Brent?"
"I don't like him."
"But you must invite him. He asked you to his."
"Well, I didn't want to go," irritably, "you made me."
"But if he asks you to his you must ask him back."
"You don't want me to invite folks I don't _want_?" William said in the voice of one goaded against his will into exasperation.
"You must invite people who invite you," said Mrs. Brown firmly, "that's what we always do in parties."
"Then they've got to invite you again and it goes on and on and _on_,"
argued William. "Where's the _sense_ of it? I don't like Johnnie Brent an' he don't like me, an' if we go on inviting each other an' our mothers go on making us go, it'll go on and on and _on_. Where's the _sense_ of it? I only jus' want to know where's the _sense_ of it?"
His logic was unanswerable.
"Well, anyway, William, I'll draw up the list. You can go and play."
William walked away, frowning, with his hands in his pockets.
"Where's the _sense_ of it?" he muttered as he went.
He began to wend his way towards the spot where he, and Douglas, and Ginger, and Henry met daily in order to wile away the hours of the Christmas holidays. At present they lived and moved and had their being in the characters of Indian Chiefs.
As William walked down the back street, which led by a short cut to their meeting-place, he unconsciously a.s.sumed an arrogant strut, suggestive of some warrior prince surrounded by his gallant braves.
"Garn! _Sw.a.n.k_!"
He turned with a dark scowl.
On a doorstep sat a little girl, gazing up at him with blue eyes beneath a tousled mop of auburn hair.
William's eye travelled sternly from her t.i.tian curls to her bare feet. He a.s.sumed a threatening att.i.tude and scowled fiercely.
"You better not say _that_ again," he said darkly.
"Why not?" she said with a jeering laugh.
"Well, you'd just better _not_," he said with a still more ferocious scowl.
"What'd you do?" she persisted.
He considered for a moment in silence. Then: "You'd see what I'd do!"
he said ominously.
"Garn! _Sw.a.n.k_!" she repeated. "Now do it! Go on, do it!"
"I'll--let you off _this_ time," he said judicially.
"Garn! _Softie_. You can't do anything, you can't! You're a softie!"
"I could cut your head off an' scalp you an' leave you hanging on a tree, I could," he said fiercely, "an' I will, too, if you go on calling me names."
"_Softie! Sw.a.n.k!_ Now cut it off! Go on!"
He looked down at her mocking blue eyes.
"You're jolly lucky I don't start on you," he said threateningly.
"Folks I do start on soon get sorry, I can tell you."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "GARN! Sw.a.n.k!" WILLIAM TURNED WITH A DARK SCOWL.]
"What you do to them?"
He changed the subject abruptly.
"What's your name?" he said.
"Sheila. What's yours?"
"Red Hand--I mean, William."
"I'll tell you sumpthin' if you'll come an' sit down by me."
"What'll you tell me?"
"Sumpthin' I bet you don't know."
"I bet I _do_."
"Well, come here an' I'll tell you."
He advanced towards her suspiciously. Through the open door he could see a bed in a corner of the dark, dirty room and a woman's white face upon the pillow.
"Oh, come _on_!" said the little girl impatiently.
He came on and sat down beside her.
"Well?" he said condescendingly, "I bet I knew all the time."
"No, you didn't! D'you know," she sank her voice to a confidential whisper, "there's a chap called Father Christmas wot comes down chimneys Christmas Eve and leaves presents in people's houses?"
