He
was reviewing his day. He had almost forgotten the stormy and
decidedly unpleasant scene with his father. Mr. Brown's rhetoric had
been rather lost on William, because its pearls of sarcasm had been so
far above his head. And William had not been really loth to retire at
once to bed. After all, it had been a very tiring day.
Now his thoughts were going over some of its most exquisite
moments--the moments when the pea and the gardener's head met and
rebounded with such satisfactory force; the moment when he swung along
the high road, monarch of a caravan and a mule and the whole wide
world; the moment when the scarecrow hunched up and collapsed so
realistically; the cat covered with green paint.... After all it was
his last day. He saw himself from to-morrow onward leading a quiet and
blameless life, walking sedately to school, working at high pressure
in school, doing his homework conscientiously in the evening, being
exquisitely polite to his family and instructors--and the vision
failed utterly to attract. Moreover, he hadn't yet tried turning off
the water at the main, or locking the cook into the larder, or--or
hundreds of things.
There came a gentle voice from the garden.
"William, where are you?"
William looked down and met the earnest gaze of Deborah.
"Hello," he said.
"William," she said. "You won't forget that you're going to start
to-morrow, will you?"
William looked at her firmly.
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