William The Outlaw by Richmal Crompton Read Free Book Online Page B

hysterics that rivalled Maria’s outburst in intensity.
    And still the Outlaws watched spellbound through the gate.
    It was the Outlaws who first saw Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper coming up the hill. She entered the Vicarage gate without looking at them. To her they were merely four inoffensive small boys and
one inoffensive small girl looking through a gate. She little knew that they held the key to a situation that was becoming more complicated every minute. Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper looked
upset. She rang at the Vicarage front door and demanded to see the Vicar. The Vicar was out, but the Vicar’s wife, looking very pale and keeping well within the doorway and casting
apprehensive glances round the garden, where Maria, temporarily breathless and exhausted, was standing motionless – the picture of mute patience – on the lawn, interviewed her. From
within the house came the unmelodious strains of Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald’s hysterics. Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper said that Mr Simpkins had vanished. He was nowhere to be found. The book he
had been reading had been discovered in the field near the garden and his lab was in such a state as to suggest a violent struggle, and Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper suspected foul play of which
Mr Simpkins was the victim.
    The Vicar’s wife, who was a woman of one idea, only pointed sternly to Maria and said:
    ‘What do you know about that , my good woman?’
    Her good woman looked, saw a mournful-looking and very wet donkey and shook her head.
    ‘Nothing ’m,’ she said primly. ‘But what I want to know is, where is Mr Simpkins? I thought the Vicar might advise me what to do, but as he’s not in, ’m,
p’raps I’d better go to the police straight.’
    The Outlaws, who felt that with the advent of Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper the plot was thickening, and who were consumed with curiosity as to why Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper had followed
the metamorphosed Mr Simpkins, crept up to the Vicarage door and listened. The mention of ‘police’ made them rather uncomfortable. The Vicar’s wife saw them and frowned.
    The Vicar’s wife was a good Christian woman, but she could never learn to like the Outlaws.
    ‘Go away, little boys,’ she said tartly, ‘how dare you come up to the door listening to conversation that is not meant for you? Go away at once. Or, wait one minute . . . Have
any of you seen Mr Simpkins this afternoon?’
    It was Joan who answered. She pointed across the lawn to Maria who was now placidly nibbling the Vicar’s hedge and said:
    ‘That’s Mr Simpkins.’
    There was a moment’s tense silence. Then the Vicar’s wife said sternly:
    ‘Do you imagine that to be funny, you impertinent little girl?’
    ‘No,’ said Joan.
    There was an innocence in Joan’s face that convinced even the Vicar’s wife.
    ‘Perhaps,’ she said more kindly, ‘you are shortsighted, little girl. That,’ pointing to Maria, ‘is a donkey.’
    ‘It’s Mr Simpkins really,’ said Joan earnestly, ‘we turned him into a donkey and we can’t turn him back.’
    The Vicar’s wife gasped, Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper gasped, the other members of the Anti-vivisection Society came out to see what it was all about and all gasped. Mrs Gerald
Fitzgerald for the time being abandoned her hysterics to gasp with them.

    ‘PERHAPS,’ SAID THE VICAR’S WIFE, ‘YOU ARE SHORT-SIGHTED, LITTLE GIRL. THAT IS A DONKEY.’ ‘IT’S MR SIMPKINS, REALLY,’ SAID JOAN
EARNESTLY.
    ‘ What? ’ said the Vicar’s wife.
    ‘ What? ’ said all the rest of them.
    ‘It’s true,’ affirmed William, ‘we’ve turned him into a donkey and we can’t turn him back again.’
    At that moment there was a sound of great commotion outside and in at the gate rushed Mr Simpkins, followed by Farmer Jenks.
    Farmer Jenks was not pursuing Mr Simpkins. Farmer Jenks and Mr Simpkins were coming on independent missions. Farmer Jenks had come to his field for Maria and found Maria gone.
The jobbing gardener’s