"Then I suppose you can go on wearing a table-cloth."
"But—but you don't want me to go through the village in a table-cloth?" said William in frenzied despair.
"You can go through the village in a table-napkin for all I care," said Mr. Clive, heartlessly. "I paid twelve guineas for this suit only last week, and I'm not going to have it mucked up any more. It'll take about six years in a press to take these creases out, anyway. I don't know what mischievous business you've been engaged in to-day, but I can guess who got hold of this suit for you, and I'll have a few words with Miss Joan on the subject this evening."
William glared at him savagely.
"Nothin' to do with Joan," he said. "I got it myself." He divested himself of the suit, shook out his table-cloth and wrapped it round him, scowling darkly.
"Well," he said, slowly and bitterly, "if you don't mind me goin' through the village in this——"
"I don't mind at all," said Mr. Clive pleasantly, "not at all. Allow me to see you to the door. Good-night, William."
Ho closed the door and went to the library window. There he watched the white-clad figure disappear down the drive. "That young man's progress through the village," he said aloud, "ought to be worth watching."
William set out once more on his adventurous journey. At the thought of the village street his knees felt quite definitely unsteady. Never to William had his home seemed so near and yet so unattainable. Suddenly he thought of the path over the fields and through the churchyard. It would bring him out a good way beyond his home, but it would avoid that nightmare of the village street.
William climbed over the stile and set off over the fields. It was nearly dark anyway. He could see no one near.... He climbed the second stile that led into the churchyard, and began to walk forward. Suddenly a woman who had been standing with her back to him, reading one of the gravestones, turned, stared at him with open mouth and eyes, gave a scream that made the hair on William's head stand upright, and shot off like an arrow from a bow, falling head over heels over the opposite stile, picking herself up and running with deafening screams in the direction of the village. William, feeling slightly shaken, sat down behind a tombstone to recover.