Just William Part 19

"Can I have lots?"

"Oh, go and ask your father."

William went out.

He returned to the dining-room, where his father was still reading a paper. The sigh with which his father greeted his entrance was not one of relief.

"If you've come to ask questions----" he began threateningly.

"I haven't," said William quickly. "Father, when you're all away on Sat.u.r.day, can I have a party?"

"No, of course not," said his father irritably. "Can't you _do_ something?"

William, goaded to desperation, burst into a flood of eloquence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE SORT OF THINGS I WANT TO DO THEY DON'T WANT ME TO DO, AN' THE SORT OF THINGS I DON'T WANT TO DO THEY WANT ME TO DO."

WILLIAM'S SCORN AND FURY WAS INDESCRIBABLE.]

"The sort of things I want to do they don't want me to do an' the sort of things I don't want to do they want me to do. Mother said to knit.

_Knit!_"

His scorn and fury were indescribable. His father looked out of the window.

"Thank Heaven, it's stopped raining! Go out!"

William went out.

There were some quite interesting things to do outside. In the road there were puddles, and the sensation of walking through a puddle, as every boy knows, is a very pleasant one. The hedges, when shaken, sent quite a shower bath upon the shaker, which also is a pleasant sensation.

The ditch was full and there was the thrill of seeing how often one could jump across it without going in. One went in more often than not.

It is also fascinating to walk in mud, sc.r.a.ping it along with one's boots. William's spirits rose, but he could not shake off the idea of the party. Quite suddenly he wanted to have a party and he wanted to have it on Sat.u.r.day. His family would be away on Sat.u.r.day. They were going to spend the day with an aunt. Aunts rarely included William in their invitation.

He came home wet and dirty and cheerful. He approached his father warily.

"Did you say I could have a party, father?" he said casually.

"_No_, I did _not_," said Mr. Brown firmly.

William let the matter rest for the present.

He spent most of the English Grammar cla.s.s in school next morning considering it. There was a great deal to be said for a party in the absence of one's parents and grown-up brother and sister. He'd like to ask George and Ginger and Henry and Douglas and--and--and--heaps of them. He'd like to ask them all. "They" were the whole cla.s.s--thirty in number.

"What have I just been saying, William?"

William sighed. That was the foolish sort of question that schoolmistresses were always asking. They ought to know themselves what they'd just been saying better than anyone. _He_ never knew. Why were they always asking him? He looked blank. Then:

"Was it anythin' about participles?" He remembered something vaguely about participles, but it mightn't have been to-day.

Miss Jones groaned.

"That was ever so long ago, William," she said. "You've not been attending."

William cleared his throat with a certain dignity and made no answer.

"Tell him, Henry."

Henry ceased his enthralling occupation of trying to push a fly into his ink-well with his nib and answered mechanically:

"Two negatives make an affirmative."

"Yes. Say that, William."

William repeated it without betraying any great interest in the fact.

"Yes. What's a negative, William?"

William sighed.

"Somethin' about photographs?" he said obligingly.

"_No_," snapped Miss Jones. She found William and the heat (William particularly) rather trying.

"It's 'no' and 'not.' And an affirmative is 'yes.'"

"Oh," said William politely.

"So two 'nos' and 'nots' mean 'yes,' if they're in the same sentence. If you said 'There's not no money in the box' you mean there is."

William considered.

He said "Oh" again.

Then he seemed suddenly to become intelligent.

"Then," he said, "if you say 'no' and 'not' in the same sentence does it mean 'yes'?"

"Certainly."

William smiled.

William's smile was a rare thing.

"Thank you," he said.

Miss Jones was quite touched. "It's all right, William," she said, "I'm glad you're beginning to take an interest in your work."

William was murmuring to himself.

"'No, of course _not_' and 'No, I did not' and a 'no' an' a 'not' mean a 'yes,' so he meant 'yes, of course' and 'yes, I did.'"