More William | Page 3

and Aunts Jane, Evangeline, and Lucy were consuming porridge with that mixture of festivity and solemnity that they felt the occasion demanded.
Then Jimmy entered, radiant, with a tin in his hand.
"Got presents," he said, proudly. "Got presents, lots of presents."
He deposited on Barbara's plate a worm which Barbara promptly threw at his face. Jimmy looked at her reproachfully and proceeded to Aunt Evangeline. Aunt Evangeline's gift was a centipede--a live centipede that ran gaily off the tablecloth on to Aunt Evangeline's lap before anyone could stop it. With a yell that sent William's father to the library with his hands to his ears, Aunt Evangeline leapt to her chair and stood with her skirts held to her knees.
"Help! Help!" she cried. "The horrible boy! Catch it! Kill it!"
Jimmy gazed at her in amazement, and Barbara looked with interest at Aunt Evangeline's long expanse of shin.
"My legs isn't like your legs," she said pleasantly and conversationally. "My legs is knees."
It was some time before order was restored, the centipede killed, and Jimmy's remaining gifts thrown out of the window. William looked across the table at Jimmy with respect in his eye. Jimmy, in spite of his youth, was an acquaintance worth cultivating. Jimmy was eating porridge unconcernedly.
Aunt Evangeline had rushed from the room when the slaughter of the centipede had left the coast clear, and refused to return. She carried on a conversation from the top of the stairs.
"When that horrible child has gone, I'll come. He may have insects concealed on his person. And someone's been dropping water all over these stairs. They're damp!"
"Dear, dear!" murmured Aunt Jane, sadly.
Jimmy looked up from his porridge.
"How was I to know she didn't like insecks?" he said, aggrievedly. "I like 'em."
William's mother's despair was only tempered by the fact that this time William was not the culprit. To William also it was a novel sensation. He realised the advantages of a fellow criminal.
After breakfast peace reigned. William's father went out for a walk with Robert. The aunts sat round the drawing-room fire talking and doing crochet-work. In this consists the whole art and duty of aunthood. All aunts do crochet-work.
They had made careful inquiries about the time of the service.
"You needn't worry," had said William's mother. "It's at 10.30, and if you go to get ready when the clock in the library strikes ten it will give you heaps of time."
[Illustration: AROUND THEM LAY, MOST INDECENTLY EXPOSED, THE INTERNAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE LIBRARY CLOCK.]
Peace ... calm ... quiet. Mrs. Brown and Ethel in the kitchen supervising the arrangements for the day. The aunts in the drawing-room discussing over their crochet-work the terrible way in which their sisters had brought up their children. That, also, is a necessary part of aunthood.
Time slipped by happily and peacefully. Then William's mother came into the drawing-room.
"I thought you were going to church," she said.
"We are. The clock hasn't struck."
"But--it's eleven o'clock!"
There was a gasp of dismay.
"The clock never struck!"
Indignantly they set off to the library. Peace and quiet reigned also in the library. On the floor sat William and Jimmy gazing with frowns of concentration at an open page of "Things a Boy Can Do." Around them lay most indecently exposed the internal arrangements of the library clock.
"William! You wicked boy!"
William raised a frowning face.
"It's not put together right," he said, "it's not been put together right all this time. We're makin' it right now. It must have wanted mendin' for ever so long. I dunno how it's been goin' at all. It's lucky we found it out. It's put together wrong. I guess it's made wrong. It's goin' to be a lot of trouble to us to put it right, an' we can't do much when you're all standin' in the light. We're very busy--workin' at tryin' to mend this ole clock for you all."
"Clever," said Jimmy, admiringly. "Mendin' the clock. _Clever!_"
"William!" groaned his mother, "you've ruined the clock. What will your father say?"
"Well, the cog-wheels was wrong," said William doggedly. "See? An' this ratchet-wheel isn't on the pawl prop'ly--not like what this book says it ought to be. Seems we've got to take it all to pieces to get it right. Seems to me the person wot made this clock didn't know much about clock-making. Seems to me----"
"Be quiet, William!"
"We was be quietin' 'fore you came in," said Jimmy, severely. "You 'sturbed us."
"Leave it just as it is, William," said his mother.
"You don't unnerstand," said William with the excitement of the fanatic. "The cog-wheel an' the ratchet ought to be put on the arbor different. See, this is the cog-wheel. Well, it oughtn't to be like wot it was. It was put on all wrong. Well, we was mendin' it. An' we was doin' it for you," he ended, bitterly, "jus' to help an'--to--to make