As he followed his family with his air of patient martyrdom on all their expeditions, it was the glimpse of this underworld alone that would lift the shadow from his furrowed brow and bring a light to his stern, freckled countenance.... There were times when he stopped and tried to get into contact with it, but it was not successful. His mother’s “Come along, William! Don’t speak to those horrid little boys,” always recalled him to the blameless and palling respectability of his own family. Yet even before that hateful cry interrupted him he knew that it was useless.
He was an alien being—a clean little boy in a neat suit, with a fashionable mother and sister. He was beyond the pale, an outsider, a pariah, a creature to be mocked and jeered at. The position galled William. He was, by instinct, on the side of the lawless—the anti-respectable.
His spirits rose as the time for his return to the country approached. Yet there was a wistful longing at his heart for the boy world of London still unexplored, as well as a fierce contempt for the London his parents had revealed to him.
*****
William had been invited to a party on his last evening in London. William’s mother’s cousin lived in Kensington, and had invited William to a “little gathering of her children’s friends.” William did not wish to go to the party. What is more, William did not intend to go to the party. But a wonderful plan had come into William’s head.
“It’s very kind of her,” he said meekly. “Yes, I’ll be very pleased to go.”
This was unlike William’s usual manner of receiving an invitation to a party. Generally there were expostulations, indignation, assertion of complete incapacity to go to anything that particular night. William’s mother looked at him.
“You—you feel all right, don’t you, dear?” she said anxiously.
“Oh, yes,” said William, “an’ I feel I’d jus’ like a party.”
“You can wear your Eton suit,” said Mrs. Brown.