"Wot'll you give me if I'm first?" said Ginger, displaying again the
base commercialism of his age.
William considered.
"I'll give you first drink out of a bottle of ginger-ale wot I'm goin'
to get with my next money. It'll be three weeks off 'cause they're
takin' the next two weeks to pay for an ole window wot my ball slipped
into by mistake."
He spoke with the bitterness that always characterised his statements
of the injustice of the grown-up world.
"All right," said Ginger.
"I won't forget about the drink of ginger-ale."
"No, you won't," said Ginger simply. "I'll remind you all right. Well,
let's set off."
"'Course," said William, "it would be _nicer_ with armour an' horses
an' trumpets, but I 'spect folks ud think anyone a bit soft wot went
about in the streets in armour now, 'cause these times is different.
She said so. Anyway she said we could still be knights an' help
people, di'n't she? Anyway, I'll get my bugle. That'll be
_something_."
William's bugle had just returned to public life after one of its
periodic terms of retirement into his father's keeping.
William took his bugle proudly in one hand and his pistol (the
glorious result of a dip in the bran tub at a school party) in the
other, and, sternly denying themselves the pleasures of afternoon
school, off the two set upon the road of romance and adventure.
"I'll carry the bugle," said Ginger, "'cause I'm squire.
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