Free William in Trouble by Richmal Crompton Page A

something for me, boy. Take this figure and put it on the table in the front
room with its fellow and then take this note to Mrs Franks, will you?’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said William meekly.
    Mr Markson sat down at his bureau. William went quickly and gratefully from the room. In the hall he stopped to consider the situation. Mr Markson would expect an answer from Mrs Franks. He
might even ring her up about it. There would be awkward complications, awkward for William that is – And suddenly yet another inspiration came to him. He pocketed the image again and set off
down the road. He walked for a few yards, turned back, walked up again to the front door of The Nest and into the back room. Mr Markson was still writing his letter. William took the Chinese figure
out of his pocket.
    ‘Mrs Franks sent you this, sir,’ he said in his most expressionless voice, staring in front of him fixedly.
    Mr Markson’s face beamed with joy.
    ‘ Sent it?’ he gasped.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said William, speaking monotonously, as though he were repeating a lesson. ‘An’ she said please will you not write to her about it or thank her or ever
mention it to her please, sir.’
    At the conclusion of this breathless speech William paled and blinked, still staring fixedly before him. But old Markie beamed with joy.
    ‘What delicacy of feeling that displays,’ he said. ‘A lesson indeed to the cruder manners of this age. How – how exceptionally kind!’ He held the china piece
on his hand. ‘The third! What almost incredible good fortune! The third! Now to put it with its two fellows.’
    He walked across to the front room and entered it. He looked from the image in his hand to the empty table where that image had stood only a few hours ago. He looked from table to image, from
image to table, and again from table to image. Then he turned for an explanation from William.
    But William was no longer there.

CHAPTER 4
ALL THE NEWS
    C ONTINUOUS rain had put a stop to the usual activities of the Outlaws. The game of Red Indians, if played in a perpetual downpour, palls after an
hour or two, and even the absorbing pastime of Pirates loses its savour when it has reached a certain pitch of dampness.
    So the Outlaws assembled in the leaky old barn and from its inadequate shelter watched the rain despondently.
    ‘Seems ’s if it’s goin’ on for ever,’ said Ginger with gloomy interest.
    ‘P’raps it is,’ said Henry. ‘P’raps it’s the end of the world comin’.’
    ‘I bet I’m the last person left alive if it is,’ said William boastfully, ‘’cause I can float on my back for hours an’ hours, an’ hours !’
    ‘ Floatin ’ won’t be no good,’ objected Douglas, ‘you’d get et up by fishes and things.’
    ‘Oh, would I !’ said William with scornful emphasis. ‘I’d take a big knife in one pocket an’ a pistol in the other an’—’
    ‘It wun’t shoot, all wet,’ said Ginger firmly.
    ‘It would. I’d have special bullets,’ said William pugnaciously. ‘I bet it would.’
    ‘Oh, shut up about bullets an’ fishes an’ things,’ said Henry, ‘let’s try ’n think of something to do. ’
    ‘Well, what is there to do?’ said William irritably, annoyed by this interruption of his alluring description of himself as the sole survivor of a submerged world.
‘I’d swim to the highest mountain in the world what there’d be a teeny bit of the top still showin’ an’ I’d stay there till the rain stopped an’ then
I’d come down an’ walk all over the world in everyone’s houses an’ shops an’ take everything out of all the shops and use everyone’s things—’
    ‘Everything’d be wet ’ objected Ginger.
    ‘It’d soon dry,’ said William optimistically. ‘I’d dry it. I’d light fires.’
    ‘You couldn’t. The coal’d be all wet,’ said Ginger.
    ‘Oh, shut up – what are we going to do now?’ said Henry again.
    ‘Let’s have a newspaper,’ said Douglas suddenly.
    They looked