"I've got everythin' ready, Mother."
Mrs. Brown ascended to his room.
Upon his bed was a large pop-gun, a football, a dormouse in a cage, a punchball on a stand, a large box of "curios," and a buckskin which was his dearest possession and had been presented to him by an uncle from South Africa.
Mrs. Brown sat down weakly on a chair.
"You can't possibly take any of these things," she said faintly but firmly.
"Well, you _said_ put my things on the bed for you to pack an' I've put them on the bed, an' now you say----"
"I meant clothes."
"Oh, _clothes_!" scornfully. "I never thought of _clothes_."
"Well, you can't take any of these things, anyway."
William hastily began to defend his collection of treasures.
"I _mus'_ have the pop-gun 'cause you never know. There may be pirates an' smugglers down there, an' you can _kill_ a man with a pop-gun if you get near enough and know the right place, an' I might need it. An'
I _must_ have the football to play on the sands with, an' the punchball to practise boxin' on, an' I _must_ have the dormouse, 'cause--'cause to feed him, an' I _must_ have this box of things and this skin to show to folks I meet down at the seaside, 'cause they're int'restin'."
But Mrs. Brown was firm, and William reluctantly yielded.
In a moment of weakness, finding that his trunk was only three-quarter filled by his things, she slipped in his beloved buckskin, while William himself put the pop-gun inside when no one was looking.
They had been unable to obtain a furnished house, so had to be content with a boarding house. Mr. Brown was eloquent on the subject.
"If you're deliberately turning that child loose into a boarding-house full, presumably, of quiet, inoffensive people, you deserve all you get. It's nothing to do with me. I'm going to have a rest cure. I've disowned him. He can do as he likes."
"It can't be helped, dear," said Mrs. Brown mildly.
Mr. Brown had engaged one of the huts on the beach chiefly for William's use, and William proudly furnished its floor with the buckskin.
"It was killed by my uncle," he announced to the small crowd of children at the door who had watched with interest his painstaking measuring of the floor in order to place his treasure in the exact centre. "He killed it dead--jus' like this."
William had never heard the story of the death of the buck, and therefore had invented one in which he had gradually come to confuse himself with his uncle in the role of hero.
"It was walkin' about an' I--he--met it. I hadn't got no gun, and it sprung at me an' I caught hold of its neck with one hand an' I broke off its horns with the other, an' I knocked it over. An' it got up an'
ran at me--him--again, an' I jus' tripped it up with my foot an' it fell over again, an' then I jus' give it one big hit with my fist right on its head, an' it killed it an' it died!"
There was an incredulous gasp.
Then there came a clear, high voice from behind the crowd.
"Little boy, you are not telling the truth."
William looked up into a thin, spectacled face.
"I wasn't tellin' it to you," he remarked, wholly unabashed.
A little girl with dark curls took up the cudgels quite needlessly in William's defence.
"He's a very _brave_ boy to do all that," she said indignantly. "So don't you go _saying_ things to him."
"Well," said William, flattered but modest, "I didn't say I did it, did I? I said my uncle--well, partly my uncle."
Mr. Percival Jones looked down at him in righteous wrath.
"You're a very wicked little boy. I'll tell your father--er--I'll tell your sister."
For Ethel was approaching in the distance and Mr. Percival Jones was in no way loth to converse with her.
[Illustration: "YOU'RE A VERY WICKED LITTLE BOY!" SAID MR. PERCIVAL JONES.]
Mr. Percival Jones was a thin, pale, aesthetic would-be poet who lived and thrived on the admiration of the elderly ladies of his boarding-house, and had done so for the past ten years. Once he had published a volume of poems at his own expense. He lived at the same boarding-house as the Browns, and had seen Ethel in the distance to meals. He had admired the red lights in her dark hair and the blue of her eyes, and had even gone so far as to wonder whether she possessed the solid and enduring qualities which he would require of one whom in his mind he referred to as his "future spouse."
He began to walk down the beach with her.
"I should like to speak to you--er--about your brother, Miss Brown,"
he began, "if you can spare me the time, of course. I trust I do not er--intrude or presume. He is a charming little man but--er--I fear--not veracious. May I accompany you a little on your way? I am--er--much attracted to your--er--family. I--er--should like to know you all better. I am--er--deeply attached to your--er--little brother, but grieved to find that he does not--er--adhere to the truth in his statements. I--er----"
Miss Brown's blue eyes were dancing with merriment.
"Oh, don't you worry about William," she said. "He's _awful_. It's much best just to leave him alone. Isn't the sea gorgeous to-day?"
They walked along the sands.
Meanwhile William had invited his small defender into his hut.
"You can look round," he said graciously. "You've seen my skin what I--he--killed, haven't you? This is my gun. You put a cork in there and it comes out hard when you shoot it. It would kill anyone,"
impressively, "if you did it near enough to them and at the right place. An' I've got a dormouse, an' a punchball, an' a box of things, an' a football, but they wouldn't let me bring them," bitterly.
"It's a _lovely_ skin," said the little girl. "What's your name?"
"William. What's yours?"
"Peggy."
"Well, let's be on a desert island, shall we? An' nothin' to eat nor anything, shall we? Come on."
She nodded eagerly.
"How _lovely_!"
They wandered out on to the promenade, and among a large crowd of passers-by bemoaned the lonely emptiness of the island and scanned the horizon for a sail. In the far distance on the cliffs could be seen the figures of Mr. Percival Jones and William's sister, walking slowly away from the town.
At last they turned towards the hut.