William again

William's family long remembered the silence and peace that marked the next few afternoons. During them, William, outstretched upon the floor of the summer-house, wrote his play with liberal application of ink over his person and clothes and the surrounding woodwork. William was not of that class of authors who neglect the needs of the body. After every few words he took a deep draught from a bottle of Orange Ale that stood on his right and a bite from an ink-coated apple on his left. He had laid in a store of apples and sweets and chocolates under the seat of the summer-house for his term of authorship. Every now and then he raised a hand to his frowning brow in thought, leaving upon it yet another imprint of his ink-sodden fingers.

"Where is he?" said his father in hushed wonder at the unwonted peace.

"He's in the summer-house writing a play," said his wife.

"I hope it's a nice long one," said her husband.

William had assembled his caste and assigned them their parts. Little Molly Carter was to be the heroine, Ginger the hero, Henry the hero's friend, Douglas a crowd of outlaws, William himself was to be the villain, stage-manager and prompter. He handed them their parts with a lofty frown. The parts were in a grimy exercise book.

"It's all wrote out," he said. "You jus' learn it where it says your names. Molly's Lady Elsabina----"

"Elsabina isn't a name I've ever heard," said that lady pertly.

"I didn't say it was, did I?" said William coldly. "I shu'n't be surprised if there was lots of names you'd never heard of. An' Ginger is Sir Rufus Archibald Green an' Henry is the Hon. Lord Leopold, an' I'm Carlo Rupino, a villain. All you've gotter do is to learn your parts an' Wednesday morning we'll go through it jus' to practise it, an' Wednesday afternoon we'll do it."

"We can't three learn out of one book," said the leading lady, who was inclined to make objections.

"Yes, you can," said William. "You can take turns sitting in the middle."

Lady Elsabina sniffed.

"And such writing!" she said scornfully.

"Well, I don't count on my fingers," said William, returning scorn for scorn, "not so's everyone can see me, at any rate."

At which public allusion to her arithmetical powers, Lady Elsabina took refuge in another sniff, followed by a haughty silence.

The rehearsal was not an unqualified success. The heroine, as is the way of heroines, got out of bed the wrong side. After a stirring domestic scene, during which she bit her nurse and flung a basin of bread and milk upon the floor, she arrived tearful and indignant and half an hour late at the rehearsal.

"Can't you come a bit later?" said the stage-manager bitterly.

"If you're going to be nasty to me," returned the heroine stormily, "I'm going back home."

"All right," muttered the stage-manager, cowed, like most stage-managers, by the threatening of tears.

The first item on the agenda was the question of the wardrobe. William had received an unpleasant surprise which considerably lowered his faith in human nature generally. On paying a quiet and entirely informal visit to his sister's bedroom in her absence, to collect some articles of festive female attire for his heroine, he had found every drawer, and even the wardrobe, locked. His sister had kept herself informed of the date of the performance, and had taken measures accordingly. He had collected only a crochet-edged towel, one of the short lace curtains from the window, and a drawn-thread work toilet-cover. Otherwise his search was barren. Passing through the kitchen, however, he found one of her silk petticoats on a clothes-horse and added it to his plunder. He found various other articles in other parts of the house. The dressing up took place in an outhouse that had once been a stable at the back of William's house. The heroine's dress consisted of Ethel's silk petticoat with holes cut for the arms. The lace curtain formed an effective head-dress, and the toilet-cover pinned on to the end of the petticoat made a handsome train.

The effect was completed by the crochet-edged towel pinned round her waist. Sir Rufus Archibald Green, swathed in an Indian embroidered table-cover, with a black satin cushion pinned on to his chest, a tea-cosy on his head, and an umbrella in his hand, looked a princely hero. The Hon. Lord Leopold wore the dining-room table-cloth and the morning-room waste-paper basket with a feather, forcibly wrested from the cock's tail by William, protruding jauntily from the middle. Douglas, as the crowd, was simply attired in William's father's top hat and a mackintosh.

William had quietly abstracted the top hat as soon as he heard definitely that his father would not be present at the performance. William's father was to preside at a political meeting in the village hall, which was to be addressed by a Great Man from the Cabinet, who was coming down from London specially for the occasion.

"Vast as are the attractions of any enterprise promoted by you, William," he had said, politely at breakfast, "duty calls me elsewhere."

William, while murmuring perfunctory sorrow at these tidings, hastily ran over in his mind various articles of his father's attire that could therefore be safely utilised. The robing of William himself as the villain had cost him much care and thought. He had finally decided upon the drawing-room rug pinned across his shoulder and a fern-pot upon his head. It was a black china fern-pot and rather large, but it rested upon William's ears, and gave him a commanding and sinister appearance. He also carried an umbrella.

These preparations took longer than the caste had foreseen, and, when finally large moustaches had been corked upon the hero's, villain's and crowd's lips, the lunch-bell sounded from the hall.

"Jus' all finished in time!" said William the optimist.

"Yes, but wot about the rehearsal," said the crowd gloomily, "wot about that?"

"Well, you've had the book to learn the stuff," said William, "that's enough, isn't it? I don't s'pose real acting people bother with rehearsals. It's quite easy. You jus' learn your stuff an' then say it. It's silly wasting time over rehearsals."