“Epilepsy!” groaned Ethel.
“Twenty-four—twenty-four if she’s a day—and the sort of hair I’ve always disliked,” groaned Robert.
William followed his mother to the kitchen rather than be left to the tender mercies of Ethel and Robert. He began to feel distinctly apprehensive about the kitchen ... that pool of eggs ... those brown liquids he’d mixed....
Mrs. Brown opened the kitchen door. On the empty chicken dish on the floor sat Jumble surrounded by chicken bones, the wishing bone protruding from his mouth, looking blissfully happy....
VI
In his bedroom whither he had perforce retired supperless, William hung up the Outlaws’ signal of distress (a scull and crossbones in black and the word “Help” in red) at his window in case Ginger or Henry or Douglas came down the road, and then surveyed the events of the day. Well, he’d done his best. He’d lived a life of self-denial and service all right. It was his family who were wrong. They hadn’t been happy or grateful or admiring. They simply weren’t worthy of a life of self-denial and service. And anyway how could he have known that it was another Marion and that Ethel couldn’t say what she meant and that Jumble was going to get in through the kitchen window?
A tiny pebble hit his window. He threw it open. There down below in the garden path were Douglas, Henry and Ginger.
“Ho! my trusty mates,” said William in a penetrating whisper. “I am pent in durance vile—sent to bed, you know—an’ I’m jolly hungry. Wilt kill some deer or venison or something for me?”
“Righto,” said Ginger, and “Yes, gallant captain,” said Douglas and Henry as they crept off through the bushes.
William returned to his survey of his present position. That old boy simply didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t ever have tried it himself. Anyway he (William) had tried it and he knew all there was to know about lives of self-denial and service and he’d done with lives of self-denial and service, thank you very much. He was going back to his ordinary kind of life first thing to-morrow....