Just William by Richmal Crompton Read Free Book Online

mark of defiance to the world in general. It was also a very interesting storybook. It opened with the hero as a small boy misunderstood and ill-treated by everyone around him. Then he ran
away. He went to sea, and in a few years made an immense fortune in the goldfields. He returned in the last chapter and forgave his family and presented them with a noble mansion and several
shiploads of gold. The idea impressed William – all except the end part. He thought he’d prefer to have the noble mansion himself and pay rare visits to his family, during which he
would listen to their humble apologies, and perhaps give them a nugget or two, but not very much – certainly not much to Ethel. He wasn’t sure whether he’d ever really forgive
them. He’d have rooms full of squeaky balloons and trumpets in his house anyway, and he’d keep caterpillars and white rats all over the place too – things they made such a fuss
about in their old house – and he’d always go about in dirty boots, and he’d never brush his hair or wash, and he’d keep dozens of motorcars, and he wouldn’t let Ethel
go out in any of them. He was roused from this enthralling daydream by the discovery and confiscation of his storybook by the master in charge, and the subsequent fury of its owner. In order
adequately to express his annoyance, he dropped a little ball of blotting paper soaked in ink down William’s back. William, on attempting retaliation, was sentenced to stay in half an hour
after school. He returned gloomily to his history book (upside down) and his misanthropic view of life. He compared himself bitterly with the hero of the storybook and decided not to waste another
moment of his life in uncongenial surroundings. He made a firm determination to run away as soon as he was released from school.
    He walked briskly down the road away from the village. In his pocket reposed the balloon. He had made the cheering discovery that the mathematics master had left it on his
desk, so he had joyfully taken it again into his possession. He thought he might reach the coast before night, and get to the goldfields before next week. He didn’t suppose it took long to
make a fortune there. He might be back before next Christmas and – crumbs, he’d jolly well make people sit up! He wouldn’t go to school, for one thing, and he’d be jolly
careful who he gave nuggets to for another. He’d give nuggets to the butcher’s boy and the postman, and the man who came to tune the piano, and the chimney sweep. He wouldn’t give
any to any of his family, or any of the masters at the school. He’d just serve people out the way they served him. He just would.
    The road to the coast seemed rather long, and he was growing rather tired. He walked in a ditch for a change, and then scraped through a hedge and took a short cut across a ploughed field. Dusk
was falling fast, and even William’s buoyant spirits began to flag. The fortune part was all very well, but in the meantime he was cold and tired and hungry. He hadn’t yet reached the
coast, much less the goldfields. Something must be done. He remembered that the boy in the story had ‘begged his way’ to the coast. William determined to beg his. But at present there
seemed nothing to beg it from, except a hawthorn hedge and a scarecrow in the field behind it. He wandered on disconsolately deciding to begin his career as a beggar at the first sign of human
habitation.
    At last he discovered a pair of iron gates through the dusk and, assuming an expression of patient suffering calculated to melt a heart of stone, walked up the drive. At the front door he
smoothed down his hair (he had lost his cap on the way), pulled up his stockings, and rang the bell. After an interval a stout gentleman in the garb of a butler opened the door and glared
ferociously up and down William.
    ‘Please—’ began William plaintively.
    The stout gentleman interrupted.
    ‘If you’re the new Boots,’ he said