“KIDNAPPERS”
THERE was quite a flutter in the village when the d’Arceys came to the Grange. A branch of the d’Arcey family, you know. Lord d’Arcey and Lady d’Arcey and Lady Barbara d’Arcey. Lady Barbara was seven years of age. She was fair, frilly, fascinating. Lady d’Arcey engaged a dancing-master to come down from London once a week to teach her dancing. They invited several of the children of the village to join. They invited William. His mother was delighted, but William—freckled, untidy, and seldom clean—was horrified to the depth of his soul. No entreaties or threats could move him. He said he didn’t care what they did to him; he said they could kill him if they liked. He said he’d rather be killed than go to an ole dancing class anyway, with that soft-looking kid. Well, he didn’t care who her father was. She was a soft-looking kid, and he wasn’t going to no dancing class with her. Wildly ignoring the rules that govern the uses of the negative, he frequently reiterated that he wasn’t going to no dancing class with her. He wouldn’t be seen speaking to her, much less dancing with her.
His mother almost wept.
“You see,” she explained to Ethel, William’s grown-up sister, “it puts us at a sort of disadvantage. And Lady d’Arcey is so nice, and it’s so kind of them to ask William!”
William’s sister, however, took a wholly different view of the matter.
“It might put them,” she said, “a good deal more against us if William went!”
William’s mother admitted that there was something in that.
*****
WILLIAM LAY IN THE LOFT—HIS CHIN RESTING ON
HIS HANDS, READING.