In a moment of weakness, finding that his trunk was only three-quarter filled by his things, she slipped in his beloved buckskin, while William himself put the pop-gun inside when no one was looking.
They had been unable to obtain a furnished house, so had to be content with a boarding house. Mr. Brown was eloquent on the subject.
"If you're deliberately turning that child loose into a boarding-house full, presumably, of quiet, inoffensive people, you deserve all you get. It's nothing to do with me. I'm going to have a rest cure. I've disowned him. He can do as he likes."
"It can't be helped, dear," said Mrs. Brown mildly.
Mr. Brown had engaged one of the huts on the beach chiefly for William's use, and William proudly furnished its floor with the buckskin.
"It was killed by my uncle," he announced to the small crowd of children at the door who had watched with interest his painstaking measuring of the floor in order to place his treasure in the exact centre. "He killed it dead—jus' like this."
William had never heard the story of the death of the buck, and therefore had invented one in which he had gradually come to confuse himself with his uncle in the rôle of hero.
"It was walkin' about an' I—he—met it. I hadn't got no gun, and it sprung at me an' I caught hold of its neck with one hand an' I broke off its horns with the other, an' I knocked it over. An' it got up an' ran at me—him—again, an' I jus' tripped it up with my foot an' it fell over again, an' then I jus' give it one big hit with my fist right on its head, an' it killed it an' it died!"
There was an incredulous gasp.
Then there came a clear, high voice from behind the crowd.