More William (2 page)

Then Jimmy entered, radiant, with a tin in his hand.

‘Got presents,’ he said, proudly. ‘Got presents, lots of presents.’

He deposited on Barbara’s plate a worm which Barbara promptly threw at his face. Jimmy looked at her reproachfully and proceeded to Aunt Evangeline. Aunt Evangeline’s gift was a
centipede – a live centipede that ran gaily off the tablecloth on to Aunt Evangeline’s lap before anyone could stop it. With a yell that sent William’s father to the library with
his hands to his ears, Aunt Evangeline leapt to her chair and stood with her skirts held to her knees.

‘Help! Help!’ she cried. ‘The horrible boy! Catch it! Kill it!’

Jimmy gazed at her in amazement, and Barbara looked with interest at Aunt Evangeline’s long expanse of shin.

‘
My
legs isn’t like
your
legs,’ she said pleasantly and conversationally. ‘My legs is knees.’

It was some time before order was restored, the centipede killed, and Jimmy’s remaining gifts thrown out of the window. William looked across the table at Jimmy with respect in his eye.
Jimmy, in spite of his youth, was an acquaintance worth cultivating. Jimmy was eating porridge unconcernedly.

Aunt Evangeline had rushed from the room when the slaughter of the centipede had left the coast clear, and refused to return. She carried on a conversation from the top of the stairs.

‘When that horrible child has gone, I’ll come in. He may have insects concealed on his person. And someone’s been dropping water all over these stairs. They’re
damp
!’

‘Dear, dear!’ murmured Aunt Jane, sadly.

Jimmy looked up from his porridge.

‘How was I to know she didn’t like insecks?’ he said, aggrievedly. ‘
I
like ’em.’

William’s mother’s despair was only tempered by the fact that this time William was not the culprit. To William also it was a novel sensation. He realised the advantages of a fellow
criminal.

After breakfast peace reigned. William’s father went out for a walk with Robert. The aunts sat round the drawing-room fire talking and doing crochet work. In this consists the whole art
and duty of aunthood.
All
aunts do crochet work.

They had made careful inquiries about the time of the service.

‘You needn’t worry,’ had said William’s mother. ‘It’s at ten thirty, and if you go to get ready when the clock in the library strikes ten it will give you
heaps of time.’

Peace . . . calm . . . quiet. Mrs Brown and Ethel in the kitchen supervising the arrangements for the day. The aunts in the drawing-room discussing over their crochet work the terrible way in
which their sisters had brought up their children. That, also, is a necessary part of aunthood.

Time slipped by happily and peacefully. Then William’s mother came into the drawing-room.

‘I thought you were going to church,’ she said.

‘We are. The clock hasn’t struck.’

‘But – it’s eleven o’clock!’

There was a gasp of dismay.

‘The clock never struck!’

Indignantly they set off to the library. Peace and quiet reigned also in the library. On the floor sat William and Jimmy gazing with frowns of concentration at an open page of
Things a Boy
Can Do.
Around them lay most indecently exposed the internal arrangements of the library clock.

‘William! You
wicked
boy!’

William raised a frowning face.

‘It’s not put together right,’ he said; ‘it’s not been put together right all this time. We’re makin’ it right now. It must have wanted mendin’
for ever so long.
I
dunno how it’s been goin’ at all. It’s lucky we found it out. It’s put together wrong. I guess it’s
made
wrong. It’s
goin’ to be a lot of trouble to us to put it right, an’ we can’t do much when you’re all standin’ in the light. We’re very busy – workin’ at
tryin’ to mend this ole clock for you all.’

AROUND THEM LAY, MOST INDECENTLY EXPOSED, THE INTERNAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE LIBRARY CLOCK.

‘Clever,’ said Jimmy, admiringly. ‘Mendin’ the clock.
Clever!
’

‘William!’ groaned his mother. ‘You’ve ruined the clock. What
will
your father say?’

‘Well, the cog wheels was wrong,’ said William doggedly. ‘See? An’ this ratchet-wheel isn’t on the pawl prop’ly – not like what this book says it ought
to be. Seems we’ve got to take it all to pieces to get it right. Seems to me the person wot made this clock didn’t know much about clock-making. Seems to me—’

‘Be
quiet
, William!’

‘We was be quietin’ ’fore you came in,’ said Jimmy severely. ‘You ’sturbed us.’

‘Leave it just as it is, William,’ said his mother.

‘You don’t
unnerstand
,’ said William with the excitement of the fanatic. ‘The cog wheel an’ the ratchet ought to be put on the arbor different. See, this is
the cog wheel. Well, it oughtn’t to be like wot it was. It was put on all
wrong.
Well, we was mendin’ it. An’ we was doin’ it for
you
,’ he ended,
bitterly, ‘jus’ to help an’ – to – to make other folks happy. It makes folks happy havin’ clocks goin’ right, anyone would
think.
But if you
want
your clocks put together wrong,
I
don’t care.’

He picked up his book and walked proudly from the room followed by the admiring Jimmy.

‘William,’ said Aunt Lucy patiently, as he passed, ‘I don’t want to say anything unkind, and I hope you won’t remember all your life that you have completely spoilt
this Christmas Day for me.’

‘Oh, dear!’ murmured Aunt Jane, sadly.

William, with a look before which she should have sunk into the earth, answered shortly that he didn’t think he would.

During the midday dinner the grown-ups, as is the foolish fashion of grown-ups, wasted much valuable time in the discussion of such futilities as the weather and the political state of the
nation. Aunt Lucy was still suffering and aggrieved.

‘I can go this evening, of course,’ she said, ‘but it’s not quite the same. The morning service is different. Yes, please, dear –
and
stuffing. Yes,
I’ll have a little more turkey, too. And, of course, the Vicar may not preach tonight. That makes such a difference. The gravy on the potatoes, please. It’s almost the first Christmas
I’ve not been in the morning. It seems quite to have spoilt the day for me.’

She bent on William a glance of gentle reproach. William was quite capable of meeting adequately that or any other glance, but at present he was too busy for minor hostilities. He was
extremely
busy. He was doing his utmost to do full justice to a meal that only happens once a year.

‘William,’ said Barbara pleasantly, ‘I can
dweam.
Can you?’

He made no answer.

‘Answer your cousin, William,’ said his mother.

He swallowed, then spoke plaintively. ‘You always say not to talk with my mouth full,’ he said.

‘You could speak when you’ve finished the mouthful.’

‘Dear,
dear
!’ murmured Aunt Jane.

This was Aunt Jane’s usual contribution to any conversation.

He looked coldly at the three pairs of horrified aunts’ eyes around him, then placidly continued his meal.

Mrs Brown hastily changed the subject of conversation. The art of combining the duties of mother and hostess is sometimes a difficult one.

Christmas afternoon is a time of rest. The three aunts withdrew from public life. Aunt Lucy found a book of sermons in the library and retired to her bedroom with it.

‘It’s the next best thing, I think,’ she said with a sad glance at William.

William was beginning definitely to dislike Aunt Lucy.

‘Please’m,’ said the cook an hour later, ‘the mincing machine’s disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’ said William’s mother, raising her hand to her head.

‘Clean gone’m. ’Ow’m I to get the supper’m? You said as ’ow I could get it done this afternoon so as to go to church this evening. I can’t do nuffink
with the mincing machine gone.’

‘I’ll come and look.’

They searched every corner of the kitchen, then William’s mother had an idea. William’s mother had not been William’s mother for eleven years without learning many things. She
went wearily up to William’s bedroom.

William was sitting on the floor. Open beside him was
Things a Boy Can Do.
Around him lay various parts of the mincing machine. His face was set and strained in mental and physical
effort. He looked up as she entered.

‘It’s a funny kind of mincing machine,’ he said, crushingly. ‘It’s not got enough parts. It’s
made
wrong—’

‘Do you know,’ she said, slowly, ‘that we’ve all been looking for that mincing machine for the last half-hour?’

‘No,’ he said without much interest, ‘I di’n’t. I’d have told you I was mendin’ it if you’d told me you was lookin’ for it. It’s
wrong
,’ he went on aggrievedly. ‘I can’t make anything with it. Look! It says in my book “How to make a model railway signal with parts of a mincing machine”.
Listen! It says, “Borrow a mincing machine from your mother—” ’

‘Did you borrow it?’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Yes. Well, I’ve got it, haven’t I? I went all the way down to the kitchen for it.’

‘Who lent it to you?’

‘No one
lent
it to me. I
borrowed
it. I thought you’d like to see a model railway signal. I thought you’d be interested. Anyone would think anyone would be
interested in seein’ a railway signal made out of a mincin’ machine.’

His tone implied that the dullness of people in general was simply beyond him. ‘An’ you haven’t got a right sort of mincin’ machine. It’s wrong. Its parts are the
wrong shape. I’ve been hammerin’ them, tryin’ to make them right, but they’re
made
wrong.’

Mrs Brown was past expostulating. ‘Take them all down to the kitchen to Cook,’ she said. ‘She’s waiting for them.’

On the stairs William met Aunt Lucy carrying her volume of sermons.

‘It’s not quite the same as the spoken word, William dear,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t the
force.
The written word doesn’t reach the
heart
as the
spoken word does, but I don’t want you to worry about it.’

William walked on as if he had not heard her.

It was Aunt Jane who insisted on the little entertainment after tea.

‘I
love
to hear the dear children recite,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they all have some little recitation they can say’

Barbara arose with shy delight to say her piece.

She sat down blushing, amid rapturous applause.

Next Jimmy was dragged from his corner. He stood up as one prepared for the worst, shut his eyes, and –

He gasped it all in one breath, and sat down panting.

This was greeted with slightly milder applause.

‘Now, William!’

‘I don’t know any,’ he said.

‘Oh, you
do
,’ said his mother. ‘Say the one you learnt at school last term. Stand up, dear, and speak clearly.’

Slowly William rose to his feet.

he began.

Here he stopped, coughed, cleared his throat, and began again.

‘Oh, get
on
!’ muttered his brother, irritably.

‘I can’t get on if you keep talkin’ to me,’ said William sternly. ‘How can I get on if you keep takin’ all the time up,
sayin
’ get on? I
can’t get on if you’re talkin’, can I?’

‘It was the Hesper Schoonerus that sailed the wintry sea an’ I’m not goin’ on if Ethel’s goin’ to keep gigglin’. It’s not a funny piece, an’
if she’s goin’ on gigglin’ like that I’m not sayin’ any more of it.’

‘Ethel, dear!’ murmured Mrs Brown, reproachfully. Ethel turned her chair completely round and left only her back exposed to William’s view. He glared at it suspiciously.