WILLIAM MAKES A NIGHT OF IT
WILLIAM had disliked Mr. Bennison from the moment he appeared, although Mr. Bennison treated him with most conscientious kindness. William disliked the way Mr. Bennison’s hair grew and the way his teeth grew and the way his ears grew, and he disliked most of all his agreeable manner to William himself. He was not used to agreeable manners from adults, and he distrusted them.
Mr. Bennison was a bachelor and wrote books on the training of children. He believed that children should be led, not driven, that their little hearts should be won by kindness, that their innocent curiosity should always be promptly satisfied. He believed that children trailed clouds of glory. He knew very few. He certainly did not know William.
Mr. Bennison had met Ethel, William’s sister, while she was staying with an aunt. Ethel possessed blue eyes and a riot of auburn hair of which William was ashamed. He considered that red hair was quite inconsistent with beauty. He found that most young men who met Ethel did not share that opinion.
Although Mr. Bennison had reached the mature age of forty without having found any passion to supersede his passion for educational theories, he experienced a distinct quickening of his middle-aged heart at the sight of Ethel with her forget-me-not eyes and copper locks. William never could understand what men “saw in” Ethel. William considered her interfering and bad-tempered and stingy, and everything that an ideal sister should not be. Yet there was no doubt that adult males “saw something” in her.
And William had the wisdom to make capital out of this distorted idea of beauty whenever he could.
William was in that state of bankruptcy which occurred regularly in the middle of each week. He was never given enough pocket money to last from Saturday to Saturday. That was one of his great grievances against life. And just now there were some pressing calls on his purse.
It was Ginger, William’s boon companion, who had seen the tops in the shop window and realised suddenly that the top season was upon them once more. The next day, almost the whole school was equipped with tops.
Only William and Ginger seemed topless. To William, a born leader, the position was intolerable. It was Wednesday. The thought of waiting till Saturday was not for one moment to be entertained. Money must somehow or other be raised in the interval.
