Just William/Chapter 2

by Richmal Crompton

 

CHAPTER II
WILLIAM THE INTRUDER

“She’s different from everybody else in the world,” stammered Robert ecstatically. “You simply couldn’t describe her. No one could!”

His mother continued to darn his socks and made no comment.

Only William, his young brother, showed interest.

“How’s she different from anyone else?” he demanded. “Is she blind or lame or sumthin’?”

Robert turned on him with exasperation.

“Oh, go and play at trains!” he said. “A child like you can’t understand anything.”

William retired with dignity to the window and listened, with interest unabated, to the rest of the conversation.

“Yes, but who is she, dear?” said their mother. “Robert, I can’t think how you get these big holes in your heels!”

Robert ran his hands wildly through his hair.

“I’ve told you who she is, Mother,” he said. “I’ve been talking about her ever since I came into the room.”

“Yes, I know, dear, but you haven’t mentioned her name or anything about her.”

“Well,” Robert spoke with an air of super-human patience, “she’s a Miss Cannon and she’s staying with the Clives and I met her out with Mrs. Clive this morning and she introduced me and she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and she——”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Brown hastily, “you told me all that.”

“Well,” went on the infatuated Robert, “we must have her to tea. I know I can’t marry yet—not while I’m still at college—but I could get to know her. Not that I suppose she’d look at me. She’s miles above me—miles above anyone. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. You can’t imagine her. You wouldn’t believe me if I described her. No one could describe her. She——”

Mrs. Brown interrupted him with haste.

“I’ll ask Mrs. Clive to bring her over one afternoon. I’ve no more of this blue wool, Robert. I wish you didn’t have your socks such different colours. I shall have to use mauve. It’s right on the heel; it won’t show.”

Robert gave a gasp of horror.

“You can’t, Mother. How do you know it won’t show? And even if it didn’t show, the thought of it—! It’s—it’s a crisis of my life now I’ve met her. I can’t go about feeling ridiculous.”

“I say,” said William open-mouthed. “Are you spoony on her?”

“William, don’t use such vulgar expressions,” said Mrs. Brown. “Robert just feels a friendly interest in her, don’t you, Robert?”

“‘A friendly interest’!” groaned Robert in despair. “No one ever tries to understand what I feel. After all I’ve told you about her and that she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and miles above me and above anyone and you think I feel a ‘friendly interest’ in her. It’s—it’s the one great passion of my life! It’s——”

“Well,” put in Mrs. Brown mildly, “I’ll ring up Mrs. Clive and ask if she’s doing anything to-morrow afternoon.”

Robert’s tragic young face lit up, then he stood wrapt in thought, and a cloud of anxiety overcast it.

“Ellen can press the trousers of my brown suit to-night, can’t she? And, Mother, could you get me some socks and a tie before to-morrow? Blue, I think—a bright blue, you know, not too bright, but not so as you don’t notice them. I wish the laundry was a decent one. You know, a man’s collar ought to shine when it’s new on. They never put a shine on to them. I’d better have some new ones for to-morrow. It’s so important, how one looks. She—people judge you on how you look. They——”

Mrs. Brown laid her work aside.

“I’ll go and ring up Mrs. Clive now,” she said.

When she returned, William had gone and Robert was standing by the window, his face pale with suspense, and a Napoleonic frown on his brow.

“Mrs. Clive can’t come,” announced Mrs. Brown in her comfortable voice, “but Miss Cannon will come alone. It appears she’s met Ethel before. So you needn’t worry any more, dear.”

Robert gave a sardonic laugh.

“Worry!” he said, “There’s plenty to worry about still. What about William?”

“Well, what about him?”

“Well, can’t he go away somewhere to-morrow? Things never go right when William’s there. You know they don’t.”

“The poor boy must have tea with us, dear. He’ll be very good, I’m sure. Ethel will be home then and she’ll help. I’ll tell William not to worry you. I’m sure he’ll be good.”

William had received specific instructions. He was not to come into the house till the tea-bell rang, and he was to go out and play in the garden again directly after tea. He was perfectly willing to obey them. He was thrilled by the thought of Robert in the rôle of the love-lorn hero. He took the situation quite seriously.

He was in the garden when the visitor came up the drive. He had been told not to obtrude himself upon her notice, so he crept up silently and peered at her through the rhododendron bushes. The proceeding also happened to suit his character of the moment, which was that of a Red Indian chief.

Miss Cannon was certainly pretty. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and dimples that came and went in her rosy cheeks. She was dressed in white and carried a parasol. She walked up the drive, looking neither to right nor left, till a slight movement in the bushes arrested her attention. She turned quickly and saw a small boy’s face, smeared black with burnt cork and framed in hens’ feathers tied on with tape. The dimples peeped out.

“Hail, O great chief!” she said.

William gazed at her open-mouthed. Such intelligence on the part of a grown-up was unusual.

“Chief Red Hand,” he supplied with a fierce scowl.

She bowed low, brown eyes alight with merriment.

“And what death awaits the poor white face who has fallen defenceless into his hand?”

“You better come quiet to my wigwam an’ see,” said Red Hand darkly.

She threw a glance to the bend in the drive behind which lay the house and with a low laugh followed him through the bushes. From one point the drawing-room window could be seen, and there the anxious Robert stood, pale with anxiety, stiff and upright in his newly-creased trousers (well turned up to show the new blue socks), his soulful eyes fixed steadfastly on the bend in the drive round which the beloved should come. Every now and then his nervous hand wandered up to touch the new tie and gleaming new collar, which was rather too high and too tight for comfort, but which the shopkeeper had informed his harassed customer was the “latest and most correct shape.”

Meanwhile the beloved had reached William’s “dug-out.” William had made this himself of branches cut down from the trees and spent many happy hours in it with one or other of his friends.

“Here is the wigwam, Pale-face,” he said in a sepulchral voice. “Stand here while I decide with Snake Face and the other chiefs what’s goin’ to be done to you. There’s Snake Face an’ the others,” he added in his natural voice, pointing to a small cluster of shrubs.

Approaching these, he stood and talked fiercely and unintelligibly for a few minutes, turning his scowling corked face and pointing his finger at her every now and then, as, apparently, he described his capture.

Then he approached her again.

“That was Red Indian what I was talkin’ then,” he explained in his ordinary voice, then sinking it to its low, roaring note and scowling more ferociously than ever, “Snake Face says the Pale-face must be scalped and cooked and eat!”

He took out a penknife and opened it as though to perform the operation, then continued, “But me and the others say that if you’ll be a squaw an’ cook for us we’ll let you go alive.”

Miss Cannon dropped on to her knees.

“Most humble and grateful thanks, great Red Hand,” she said. “I will with pleasure be your squaw.”

“I’ve gotter fire round here,” said William proudly, leading her to the back of the wigwam, where a small wood fire smouldered spiritlessly, choked by a large tin full of a dark liquid.

“That, O Squaw,” said Red Hand with a dramatic gesture, “is a Pale-face we caught las’ night!”

The squaw clasped her hands together.

“Oh, how lovely!” she said. “Is he cooking?”

Red Hand nodded. Then,

“I’ll get you some feathers,” he said obligingly. “You oughter have feathers, too.”

He retired into the depth of the wigwam and returned with a handful of hen feathers. Miss Cannon took off her big shady hat and stuck the feathers into her fluffy brown hair with a laugh.

“This is jolly!” she said. “I love Red Indians!”

“I’ve got some cork you can have to do your face, too,” went on William with reckless generosity. “It soon burns in the fire.”

She threw a glance towards the chimneys of the house that could be seen through the trees and shook her pretty head regretfully.

“I’m afraid I’d better not,” she said sadly.

“Well,” he said, “now I’ll go huntin’ and you stir the Pale-face and we’ll eat him when I come back. Now, I’ll be off. You watch me track.”

He opened his clasp-knife with a bloodthirsty flourish and, casting sinister glances round him, crept upon his hands and knees into the bushes. He circled about, well within his squaw’s vision, obviously bent upon impressing her. She stirred the mixture in the tin with a twig and threw him every now and then the admiring glances he so evidently desired.

Soon he returned, carrying over his shoulder a door-mat which he threw down at her feet.

“A venison, O squaw,” he said in a lordly voice. “Let it be cooked. I’ve had it out all morning,” he added in his ordinary tones; “they’ve not missed it yet.”

He fetched from the “wigwam” two small jagged tins and, taking the larger tin off the fire, poured some into each.

“Now,” he said, “here’s some Pale-face for you, squaw.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m sure he’s awfully good, but——”

“You needn’t be frightened of it,” said William protectively. “It’s jolly good, I can tell you.” He picked up the paper cover of a packet of soup from behind the trees. “It’s jus’ that and water and it’s jolly good!”

“How lovely! Do they let you——?”

“They don’t let me,” he broke in hastily, “but there’s heaps in the larder and they don’t notice one every now an’ then. Go on!” encouragingly, “I don’t mind you having it! Honest, I don’t! I’ll get some more soon.”

Bravely she raised the tin to her lips and took a sip.

“Gorgeous!” she said, shutting her eyes. Then she drained the tin.

William’s face shone with pride and happiness. But it clouded over as the sound of a bell rang out from the house.

“Crumbs! That’s tea!”

Hastily Miss Cannon took the feathers from her hair and put on her hat.

“You don’t keep a looking-glass in your wigwam I suppose?” she said.

“N-no,” admitted William. “But I’ll get one for next time you come. I’ll get one from Ethel’s room.”

“Won’t she mind?”

“She won’t know,” said William simply.

Miss Cannon smoothed down her dress.

“I’m horribly late. What will they think of me? It was awful of me to come with you. I’m always doing awful things. That’s a secret between you and me.” She gave William a smile that dazzled him. “Now come in and we’ll confess.”

“I can’t,” said William. “I’ve got to wash an’ come down tidy. I promised I would. It’s a special day. Because of Robert, you know. Well you know. Because of—Robert!”

He looked up at her mystified face with a significant nod.

Robert was frantic. He had run his hands through his hair so often that it stood around his head like a spiked halo.

“We can’t begin without her,” he said. “She’ll think we’re awful. It will—put her off me for ever. She’s not used to being treated like that. She’s the sort of girl people don’t begin without. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met in all my life and you—my own mother—treat her like this. You may be ruining my life. You’ve no idea what this means to me. If you’d seen her you’d feel more sympathy. I simply can’t describe her—I——”

“I said four o’clock, Robert,” said Mrs. Brown firmly, “and it’s after half-past. Ethel, tell Emma she can ring the bell and bring in tea.”

The perspiration stood out on Robert’s brow.

“It’s—the downfall of all my hopes,” he said hoarsely.

Then, a few minutes after the echoes of the tea-bell died away, the front door bell rang sharply. Robert stroked his hair down with wild, unrestrained movements of his hands, and summoned a tortured smile to his lips.

Miss Cannon appeared upon the threshold, bewitching and demure.

“Aren’t I perfectly disgraceful?” she said with her low laugh. “To tell the truth, I met your little boy in the drive and I’ve been with him some time. He’s a perfect little dear, isn’t he?”

Her brown eyes rested on Robert. Robert moistened his lips and smiled the tortured smile, but was beyond speech.

“Yes, I know Ethel and I met your son—yesterday, wasn’t it?”

Robert murmured unintelligibly, raising one hand to the too tight collar, and then bowed vaguely in her direction.

Then they went in to tea.

William, his hair well brushed, the cork partially washed from his face, and the feathers removed, arrived a few minutes later. Conversation was carried on chiefly by Miss Cannon and Ethel. Robert racked his brain for some striking remark, something that would raise him in her esteem far above the ranks of the ordinary young man, but nothing came. Whenever her brown eyes rested on him, however, he summoned the mirthless smile to his lips and raised a hand to relieve the strain of the imprisoning collar. Desperately he felt the precious moments passing and his passion yet unrevealed, except by his eyes, whose message he was afraid she had not read.

As they rose from tea, William turned to his mother, with an anxious sibilant whisper,

“Ought I to have put on my best suit too?”

The demure lights danced in Miss Cannon’s eyes and the look the perspiring Robert sent him would have crushed a less bold spirit.

William had quite forgotten the orders he had received to retire from the scene directly after tea. He was impervious to all hints. He followed in the train of the all-conquering Miss Cannon to the drawing-room and sat on the sofa with Robert who had taken his seat next his beloved.

“Are you—er—fond of reading, Miss Cannon?” began Robert with a painful effort.

“I—wrote a tale once,” said William boastfully, leaning over Robert before she could answer. “It was a jolly good one. I showed it to some people. I’ll show it to you if you like. It began with a pirate on a raft an’ he’d stole some jewel’ry and the king the jewels belonged to was coming after him on a steamer and jus’ when he was comin’ up to him he jumped into the water and took the jewls with him an’ a fish eat the jewls and the king caught it an’,” he paused for breath.

“I’d love to read it!” said Miss Cannon.

Robert turned sideways, and resting an arm on his knee to exclude the persistent William, spoke in a husky voice.

“What is your favourite flower, Miss Cannon?”

William’s small head was craned round Robert’s arm.

“I’ve gotter garden. I’ve got Virginia Stock grow’n all over it. It grows up in no time. An’ must’erd ’n cress grows in no time, too. I like things what grow quick, don’t you? You get tired of waiting for the other sorts, don’t you?”

Robert rose desperately.

“Would you care to see the garden and green-houses, Miss Cannon?” he said.

“I’d love to,” said Miss Cannon.

With a threatening glare at William, Robert led the way to the garden. And William, all innocent animation, followed.

“Can you tie knots what can’t come untied?” he demanded.

“No,” she said, “I wish I could.”

“I can. I’ll show you. I’ll get a piece of string and show you afterwards. It’s easy but it wants practice, that’s all. An’ I’ll teach you how to make aeroplanes out of paper what fly in the air when it’s windy. That’s quite easy. Only you’ve gotter be careful to get ’em the right size. I can make ’em and I can make lots of things out of match boxes an’ things an’——”

The infuriated Robert interrupted.

“These are my father’s roses. He’s very proud of them.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Well, wait till you see my Virginia Stock! that’s all. Wait——”

“Will you have this tea-rose, Miss Cannon?” Robert’s face was purple as he presented it. “It—it—er—it suits you. You—er—flowers and you—that is—I’m sure—you love flowers—you should—er—always have flowers. If I——”

“An’ I’ll get you those red ones and that white one,” broke in the equally infatuated William, determined not to be outshone. “An’ I’ll get you some of my Virginia Stock. An’ I don’t give my Virginia Stock to anyone,” he added with emphasis.

When they re-entered the drawing-room, Miss Cannon carried a large bouquet of Virginia Stock and white and red roses which completely hid Robert’s tea-rose. William was by her side, chatting airily and confidently. Robert followed—a pale statue of despair.

In answer to Robert’s agonised glance, Mrs. Brown summoned William to her corner, while Robert and Miss Cannon took their seat again upon the sofa.

“I hope—I hope,” said Robert soulfully, “I hope your stay here is a long one?”

“Well, why sha’n’t I jus’ speak to her?” William’s whisper was loud and indignant.

“’Sh, dear!” said Mrs. Brown.

“I should like to show you some of the walks around here,” went on Robert desperately with a fearful glance towards the corner where William stood in righteous indignation before his mother. “If I could have that—er—pleasure—er—honour?”

“I was only jus’ speaking to her,” went on William’s voice. “I wasn’t doin’ any harm, was I? Only speaking to her!”

The silence was intense. Robert, purple, opened his lips to say something, anything to drown that horrible voice, but nothing would come. Miss Cannon was obviously listening to William.

“Is no one else ever to speak to her.” The sibilant whisper, raised in indignant appeal, filled all the room. “Jus’ ’cause Robert’s fell in love with her?”

The horror of the moment haunted Robert’s nights and days for weeks to come.

Mrs. Brown coughed hastily and began to describe at unnecessary length the ravages of the caterpillars upon her husband’s favourite rose-tree.

William withdrew with dignity to the garden a minute later and Miss Cannon rose from the sofa.

“I must be going, I’m afraid,” she said with a smile.

Robert, anguished and overpowered, rose slowly.

“You must come again some time,” he said weakly but with passion undaunted.

“I will,” she said. “I’m longing to see more of William. I adore William!”

They comforted Robert’s wounded feelings as best they could, but it was Ethel who devised the plan that finally cheered him. She suggested a picnic on the following Thursday, which happened to be Robert’s birthday and incidentally the last day of Miss Cannon’s visit, and the picnic party was to consist of—Robert, Ethel, Mrs. Clive and Miss Cannon, and William was not even to be told where it was to be. The invitation was sent that evening and Robert spent the week dreaming of picnic lunches and suggesting impossible dainties of which the cook had never heard. It was not until she threatened to give notice that he reluctantly agreed to leave the arrangements to her. He sent his white flannels (which were perfectly clean) to the laundry with a note attached, hinting darkly at legal proceedings if they were not sent back, spotless, by Thursday morning. He went about with an expression of set and solemn purpose upon his frowning countenance. William he utterly ignored. He bought a book of poems at a second-hand bookshop and kept them on the table by his bed.

They saw nothing of Miss Cannon in the interval, but Thursday dawned bright and clear, and Robert’s anxious spirits rose. He was presented with a watch and chain by his father and with a bicycle by his mother and a tin of toffee (given not without ulterior motive) by William.

They met Mrs. Clive and Miss Cannon at the station and took tickets to a village a few miles away whence they had decided to walk to a shady spot on the river bank.

William’s dignity was slightly offended by his pointed exclusion from the party, but he had resigned himself to it, and spent the first part of the morning in the character of Chief Red Hand among the rhododendron bushes. He had added an ostrich feather found in Ethel’s room to his head-dress, and used almost a whole cork on his face. He wore the door-mat pinned to his shoulders.

After melting some treacle toffee in rain-water over his smoking fire, adding orange juice and drinking the resulting liquid, he tired of the game and wandered upstairs to Robert’s bedroom to inspect his birthday presents. The tin of toffee was on the table by Robert’s bed. William took one or two as a matter of course and began to read the love-poems. He was horrified a few minutes later to see the tin empty, but he fastened the lid with a sigh, wondering if Robert would guess who had eaten them. He was afraid he would. Anyway he’d given him them. And anyway, he hadn’t known he was eating them.

He then went to the dressing-table and tried on the watch and chain at various angles and with various postures. He finally resisted the temptation to wear them for the rest of the morning and replaced them on the dressing-table.

Then he wandered downstairs and round to the shed, where Robert’s new bicycle stood in all its glory. It was shining and spotless and William gazed at it in awe and admiration. He came to the conclusion that he could do it no possible harm by leading it carefully round the house. Encouraged by the fact that Mrs. Brown was out shopping, he walked it round the house several times. He much enjoyed the feeling of importance and possession that it gave him. He felt loth to part with it. He wondered if it was very hard to ride. He had tried to ride one once when he was staying with an aunt. He stood on a garden bench and with difficulty transferred himself from that to the bicycle seat. To his surprise and delight he rode for a few yards before he fell off. He tried again and fell off again. He tried again and rode straight into a holly bush. He forgot everything in his determination to master the art. He tried again and again. He fell off or rode into the holly bush again and again. The shining black paint of the bicycle was scratched, the handle bars were slightly bent and dulled; William himself was bruised and battered but unbeaten.

At last he managed to avoid the fatal magnet of the holly bush, to steer an unsteady ziz-zag course down the drive and out into the road. He had had no particular intention of riding into the road. In fact he was still wearing his befeathered headgear, blacked face, and the mat pinned to his shoulders. It was only when he was actually in the road that he realised that retreat was impossible, that he had no idea how to get off the bicycle.

What followed was to William more like a nightmare than anything else. He saw a motor-lorry coming towards him and in sudden panic turned down a side street and from that into another side street. People came out of their houses to watch him pass. Children booed or cheered him and ran after him in crowds. And William went on and on simply because he could not stop. His iron nerve had failed him. He had not even the presence of mind to fall off. He was quite lost. He had left the town behind him and did not know where he was going. But wherever he went he was the centre of attraction. The strange figure with blackened, streaked face, mat flying behind in the wind and a head-dress of feathers from which every now and then one floated away, brought the population to its doors. Some said he had escaped from an asylum, some that he was an advertisement of something. The children were inclined to think he was part of a circus. William himself had passed beyond despair. His face was white and set. His first panic had changed to a dull certainty that this would go on for ever. He would never know how to stop. He supposed he would go right across England. He wondered if he were near the sea now. He couldn’t be far off. He wondered if he would ever see his mother and father again. And his feet pedalled mechanically along. They did not reach the pedals at their lowest point; they had to catch them as they came up and send them down with all their might.

It was very tiring; William wondered if people would be sorry if he dropped down dead.

I have said that William did not know where he was going.

But Fate knew.

The picnickers walked down the hill from the little station to the river bank. It was a beautiful morning. Robert, his heart and hopes high, walked beside his goddess, revelling in his nearness to her though he could think of nothing to say to her. But Ethel and Mrs. Clive chattered gaily.

“We’ve given William the slip,” said Ethel with a laugh. “He’s no idea where we’ve gone even!”

“I’m sorry,” said Miss Cannon, “I’d have loved William to be here.”

“You don’t know him,” said Ethel fervently.

“What a beautiful morning it is!” murmured Robert, feeling that some remark was due from him. “Am I walking too fast for you—Miss Cannon?”

“Oh, no.”

“May I carry your parasol for you?” he enquired humbly.

“Oh, no, thanks.”

He proposed a boat on the river after lunch, and it appeared that Miss Cannon would love it, but Ethel and Mrs. Clive would rather stay on the bank.

His cup of bliss was full. It would be his opportunity of sealing lifelong friendship with her, of arranging a regular correspondence, and hinting at his ultimate intentions. He must tell her that, of course, while he was at college he was not in a position to offer his heart and hand, but if she could wait—— He began to compose speeches in his mind.

They reached the bank and opened the luncheon baskets. Unhampered by Robert the cook had surpassed herself. They spread the white cloth and took up their position around it under the shade of the trees.

Just as Robert was taking up a plate of sandwiches to hand them with a courteous gesture to Miss Cannon, his eyes fell upon the long, white road leading from the village to the riverside and remained fixed there, his face frozen with horror. The hand that held the plate dropped lifelessly back again on to the table-cloth. Their eyes followed his. A curious figure was cycling along the road—a figure with blackened face and a few drooping feathers on its head, and a door-mat flying in the wind. A crowd of small children ran behind cheering. It was a figure vaguely familiar to them all.

“It can’t be,” said Robert hoarsely, passing a hand over his brow.

No one spoke.

It came nearer and nearer. There was no mistaking it.

“William!” gasped four voices.

William came to the end of the road. He did not turn aside to either of the roads by the riverside. He did not even recognise or look at them. With set, colourless face he rode on to the river bank, and straight amongst them. They fled from before his charge. He rode over the table-cloth, over the sandwiches, patties, rolls and cakes, down the bank and into the river.

They rescued him and the bicycle. Fate was against Robert even there. It was a passing boatman who performed the rescue. William emerged soaked to the skin, utterly exhausted, but feeling vaguely heroic. He was not in the least surprised to see them. He would have been surprised at nothing. And Robert wiped and examined his battered bicycle in impotent fury in the background while Miss Cannon pillowed William’s dripping head on her arm, fed him on hot coffee and sandwiches and called him “My poor darling Red Hand!”

She insisted on going home with him. All through the journey she sustained the character of his faithful squaw. Then, leaving a casual invitation to Robert and Ethel to come over to tea, she departed to pack.

Mrs. Brown descended the stairs from William’s room with a tray on which reposed a half-empty bowl of gruel, and met Robert in the hall.

“Robert,” she remonstrated, “you really needn’t look so upset.”

Robert glared at her and laughed a hollow laugh.

“Upset!” he echoed, outraged by the inadequacy of the expression. “You’d be upset if your life was ruined. You’d be upset. I’ve a right to be upset.”

He passed his hand desperately through his already ruffled hair.

“You’re going there to tea,” she reminded him.

“Yes,” he said bitterly, “with other people. Who can talk with other people there? No one can. I’d have talked to her on the river. I’d got heaps of things ready in my mind to say. And William comes along and spoils my whole life—and my bicycle. And she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’ve wanted that bicycle for ever so long and it’s not fit to ride.”

“But poor William has caught a very bad chill, dear, so you oughtn’t to feel bitter to him. And he’ll have to pay for your bicycle being mended. He’ll have no pocket money till it’s paid for.”

“You’d think,” said Robert with a despairing gesture in the direction of the hall table and apparently addressing it, “you’d think four grown-up people in a house could keep a boy of William’s age in order, wouldn’t you? You’d think he wouldn’t be allowed to go about spoiling people’s lives and—and ruining their bicycles. Well, he jolly well won’t do it again,” he ended darkly.

Mrs. Brown, proceeded in the direction of the kitchen.

“Robert,” she said soothingly over her shoulder, “you surely want to be at peace with your little brother, when he’s not well, don’t you?”

“Peace?” he said. Robert turned his haggard countenance upon her as though his ears must have deceived him. “Peace! I’ll wait. I’ll wait till he’s all right and going about; I won’t start till then. But—peace! It’s not peace, it’s an armistice—that’s all.”