She shut the door and returned to the morning-room.
"Go and wash your hands, William," said Mrs. Brown.
William was watching Mr. Romford's crestfallen departure. His indignation returned.
"Makin' me his cat-carrier!" he muttered.
"An' how much do you think he gave me for bringing it?"
"I've no idea, and if once the dirt gets right into a bite like that----"
"_Nothin'_," said William, dramatically, as he turned to the door.
WILLIAM considered that the microbe world was treating him unfairly. Mild chicken-pox would be, on the whole, a welcome break in the monotony of life. It would mean delicacies such as jelly and cream and chicken. It would mean respite from the pressing claims of education.
It would afford an excuse for disinclination to work for months afterwards. William was an expert in the tired look and deep sigh that, for many months after an illness, would touch his mother's heart and make her tell him to put his books away and go out for a walk. No one could rival William in extracting the last ounce of profit from a slight indisposition.
And now Henry, Douglas and Ginger, William's bosom friends and companions in crime, had all succumbed to chicken-pox, and chicken-pox had passed William by, leaving him aggrieved and lonely. William himself spared no effort. He breathed in heavily the atmosphere of Ginger's Latin Grammar, on which Ginger had been lately engaged, as soon as he heard that Ginger had fallen a victim. It was no use. William caught nothing.
So William was left alone, bereft of his faithful friends, gloomily picturing their existence as one glorified holiday. But his troubles did not end there. Mr. Cremer, William's peaceful and long-suffering form master, became ill, and the next morning his place was taken by Mr. French.
William's attitude to his schoolmasters was, as a rule, one of pitying forbearance, but he was, on the whole, quite kindly disposed to them. He indulged their whims, he smiled at their jokes, he endured their sarcasm; but he refused to concentrate his mental powers on _x_'s and _y_'s and dates like 1815 in the few precious hours that were at his disposal in the evening. Instead of doing homework, he preferred to play at Red Indians or Pirates, or to hunt for rats and rabbits with Jumble, his mongrel dog.