"Thanks," he said, "I don't jus' feel like any more readin'. I'd like more to do somethin'. I'm tired of doin' nothin'."
She looked at him helplessly.
"But what do you want to do, William darling?"
"Dunno. Any sort of a game would do," he said graciously.
The only game in Aunt Ellen's house was an old archery set, a relic of her Victorian youth. She brought it down for William.
"You see, you shoot at the target, darling," she explained.
"Thanks," said William, brightening considerably. "You needn't bother lending me the target."
Aunt Ellen retreated upstairs to continue her interrupted nap.
It was only when William, in a perfectly laudable attempt to shoot an apple down from the apple-tree, had broken the landing window, driven the cat into a hysterical state of fury, and landed an arrow full in the back of the next-door gardener, that Aunt Ellen raised herself once more from the bed that was usually the scene of such untroubled rest. She rescued William, in a state of indignation, from the cat and gardener, and suggested a little walk. She felt, somehow, less sure of the contaminating influence of the outside world on William's character.
"Everyone's got to practise," said William indignantly. "Well, I was only practising. I'd have got my eye in soon. I hadn't got my eye in when I hit 'em. Everyone's got to practise. No one's born with their eye in. If I went on about five minutes longer, I wouldn't be hittin' anythin' 'cept wot I wanted to. And then," he added darkly, with a vague mental vision of the world in general, and Peter and the cat and the gardener in particular, at his mercy, "then some folks had better look out."