Just -- William

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Just -- William
Richmal Crompton
(1922)
Mr. Heppleback, the glazier, cycled slowly down the country lane and in at the gate of the small detached house in which the Brown family lived. His practised eye swept the scene before him, coming to rest finally on a shattered pane of glass in a window on the right of the door. He nodded to himself with an expression of mingled amusement and resignation, then dismounted, unstrapped the sheet of glass from the back of his cycle and rang the bell.
A middle-aged woman, wearing an overall, opened the door. She had a flat expressionless face, and she looked at Mr. Heppleback without apparent interest.
"Mornin", Emily," said Mr. Heppleback. "How's yourself?"
"Might be worse," said Emily in a voice that doubted it.
Mr. Heppleback cocked his head over his shoulder.
"Dining-room window again, I see?"
"Again 's the word," said Emily with a sigh.
Mr. Heppleback took his foot rule from his pocket and began to measure the window-pane.
"Well, boys will be boys," he said. "That's what I always say."
"It's not what Mr. Brown says," said Emily, lingering in the doorway to watch Mr. Heppleback's activities with a lack-lustre eye. was 'Every says somethiri" quite different to that. Took quite a while, too, sayin' it las' night."
"What was it this time? A cricket ball?"
"No, Big Chief Firewater's tomahawk."
Mr. Heppleback laughed. "You don't say!" he said.
He put his foof rule back into his pocket and surveyed the garden.
"Not a bad bit o' garden this, you know," he said.
"Pity they don't keep it tidier."
"How d'you mean, "tidier"?" said Emily.
"Well... look at that flower-bed."
"Oh tfft" said Emily. "Rudolph the smuggler 'ad a bit of a set-to with excisemen over that on Thursday."
"Well, the other one's not much better."
"That was the 'eadquarters of the underground resistance movement in France for over a week. 'E'd been to one of these 'ere films. "Every was gold-diggin" in South Africa there yesterday, too."
"E gets about, doesn't 'e?" said Mr. Heppleback admiringly.
His glance went round the garden again.
"What's 'appened to that tree? It was all right last time I came."
"It may've been one of 'is parachute practices," said Emily, "or it may have been the crash landin' 'e did yesterday."
Mr. Heppleback laughed. "Well, I'll be settin' about my window."
"An' I'll be settin' about my breakfast."
"See you later," said Mr. Heppleback.
"Maybe," said Emily, going back into the hall and closing the door.
If comparative quiet reigned outside, the inside of the Browns' house was less suggestive of peace. Three separate voices called "Emily!" as she turned from the door to go to the kitchen. Emily stood motionless for a few seconds, then, heaving a deep sigh, turned to cope with the situation nearest at hand.
The situation nearest at hand was a good-looking young man of about twenty, standing at the top of the staircase. His face wore an expression of exasperation and a mask of sticky-looking white cream.
"Yes, Mr. Robert?" said Emily, eyeing him dispassionately.
"Where the dickens is my shaving cream?" said Robert.
"In your hand, Mr. Robert," said Emily, in the slow and patient voice in which one points out the obvious.
"This is shoe cream!" shouted Robert. "I've got the filthy stuff all over my face."
Emily looked at him, and for a moment--only a moment--the corners of her drooping mouth twitched slightly.
"Well, now," she said, "I do remember your father telling William he shouldn't have his pocket-money unless he kept his shoes cleaner."
"What's that got to do with it?" stormed Robert.
"Well," said Emily, a certain slow enjoyment tempering the despondency of her manner, "I did hear William say that he was going to give them a good clean-up with white cream if he could find any."
"Wait till I get hold of him," said Robert between his teeth, then, twisting his face into lines of agony and making an ineffectual effort to wipe the clinging glutinous substance from his cheeks with his hand, turned and strode back angrily to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
"Emily!"
Emily, who was now on her way to the kitchen, stopped.
"Yes, Miss Ethel?"
"Do come up here a minute."
Emily heaved the deep sigh that was her automatic reaction to the never-ceasing demands of fate and went upstairs to the landing, pausing outside the bathroom door to straighten the mat that Robert's volcanic passage had dislodged from its position.
As she reached the landing a bedroom door opened and a girl came out. She was a very pretty girl, with red-gold hair and cornflower-blue eyes, and she wore a rayon dressing-gown that was as near the colour of her eyes as she could get it.
The mirror that she held in her hand showed that shje was engaged in the process of "making-up".
"It's kind of you to tidy my room, Emily," she said, "but I wish you wouldn't move things... There were three lipsticks on my dressing-table yesterday, and today I can't