“I’m afraid you’ll find some things gone,” said William faintly; “some boys was in.”
“That’s all right, William,” said Mr. Moss, roused again from his rosy dreams. “That’s quite all right.”
But it was not “quite all right” with William. Reader, if you had been left, at the age of eleven, in sole charge of a sweet shop for a whole morning, would it have been “all right” with you? I trow not. But we will not follow William through the humiliating hours of the afternoon. We will leave him as, pale and unsteady, but as yet master of the situation, he wends his homeward way.
CHAPTER XI
THE BEST LAID PLANS
I
“She’s—she’s a real Botticelli,” said the young man dreamily, as he watched the figure of William’s sister, Ethel, disappearing into the distance.
William glared at him.
“Bottled cherry yourself!” he said indignantly. “She can’t help having red hair, can she? No more’n you can help havin’—havin’——” his eye wandered speculatively over the young man in search of physical defects—“having big ears,” he ended.