She sighed.
“No, dear. It’s to give pleasure to your godmother. I know you like to give people pleasure.” William was silent cogitating over this entirely new aspect of his character.
He set off down the road with Ethel and her friend Blanche. Bosom friends of his, with jerseys, with normal dirty hands and faces, passed him and stared at him in amazement.
He acknowledged their presence only by a cold stare. On ordinary days he was a familiar figure on that road himself, also comfortably jerseyed and gloriously dirty. He would then have greeted them with a war-whoop and a friendly punch. But now he was an outcast, a pariah, a thing apart—a boy in his best clothes and kid gloves on an ordinary morning.
The photographer was awaiting them. William returned his smile of welcome with a scowl.
“So this is our little friend?” said the photographer. “And what is his name?”
William grew purple.
Ethel began to enjoy it.
“Willie,” she said.
Now, there were many insults that William had learned to endure with outward equanimity, but this was not one. Ethel knew perfectly well his feeling with regard to the name “Willie.” It was a deliberate revenge because she had to waste a whole morning on him. Moreover, Ethel had various scores to wipe off against William, and it was not often that she had him entirely at her mercy.