Free Still William by Richmal Crompton Page A

Dexter.’
    ‘I must say I simply can’t understand why you’ve been doing all this, William,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘We must just wait till your father comes in and see what he makes
of it. And I can’t think why dinner’s so late.’
    ‘She’s gone to bed,’ said William gloomily.
    ‘I’d better see to things then,’ said Mrs Brown going into the hall.
    ‘Epilepsy!’ groaned Ethel.
    ‘Twenty-four – twenty-four if she’s a day – and the sort of hair I’ve always disliked,’ groaned Robert.
    William followed his mother to the kitchen rather than be left to the tender mercies of Ethel and Robert. He began to feel distinctly apprehensive about the kitchen . . . that pool of eggs . . .
those brown liquids he’d mixed . . .
    Mrs Brown opened the kitchen door. On the empty chicken dish on the floor sat Jumble surrounded by chicken bones, the wishing bone protruding from his mouth, looking blissfully happy . . .
    VI
    In his bedroom whither he had perforce retired supperless, William hung up the Outlaw’s signal of distress (a scull and crossbones in black and the word ‘Help’
in red) at his window in case Ginger or Henry or Douglas came down the road, and then surveyed the events of the day. Well, he’d done his best. He’d lived a life of self-denial and
service all right. It was his family who were wrong. They hadn’t been happy or grateful or admiring. They simply weren’t worthy of a life of self-denial and service. And anyway how
could he have known that it was another Marion and that Ethel couldn’t say what she meant and that Jumble was going to get in through the kitchen window?
    A tiny pebble hit his window. He threw it open. There down below in the garden path were Douglas, Henry and Ginger.
    ‘Ho! My trusty mates,’ said William in a penetrating whisper. ‘I am pent in durance vile – sent to bed, you know – an’ I’m jolly hungry. Wilt kill some
deer or venison or something for me?’
    ‘Righto,’ said Ginger, and ‘Yes, gallant captain,’ said Douglas and Henry as they crept off through the bushes.
    William returned to his survey of his present position. That old boy simply didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t ever have tried it himself. Anyway he (William) had
tried it and he knew all there was to know about lives of self-denial and service and he’d done with lives of self-denial and service, thank you very much. He was going back to his
ordinary kind of life first thing tomorrow . . .
    A tiny pebble at the window. William leant out. Below were Ginger, Henry and Douglas with a small basket.
    ‘Oh, crumbs!’ said William joyfully.
    He lowered a string and they tied the little basket on to it. William drew it up fairly successfully. It contained a half-eaten apple, a bar of toffee that had spent several days unwrapped in
Henry’s pocket, which was covered with bits of fluff, a very stale bun purloined from Ginger’s mother’s larder, and a packet of monkey nuts bought with Ginger’s last
twopence.
    William’s eyes shone.
    ‘Oh, I say ,’ he said gratefully, ‘thanks awfully . And, I say, you’d better go now ’case they see you, and I say , I’ll come huntin’
wild animals with you tomorrow night.’
    ‘Righto,’ said the Outlaws creeping away through the bushes.
    Downstairs William’s family circle consumed a meal consisting of sardines and stewed pears. They consumed it in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr Brown’s dry,
‘I suppose there must be quite a heavy vein of insanity somewhere in the family for it to come out so strongly in William.’ And by Ethel’s indignant, ‘And epilepsy !
Why on earth did he fix on epilepsy ?’ And by Robert’s gloomy, ‘Engaged to be married to her . . . twenty-four . . . chained to her for life.’
    Upstairs the cause of all their troubles sat on the floor in the middle of his bedroom with his little pile of eatables before him.
    ‘Come on, my gallant braves,’ he said addressing an