[Illustration:  “HE’S GOT OUT,” WILLIAM SAID REPROACHFULLY.  “WHY DI’N’T SOMEONE STOP HIM GETTIN’ OUT?”]

“An abominable attack ... utterly unprovoked ... dastardly ruffians!”

Here he stopped to splutter because his mouth was full of coal dust.  While he was spluttering, William, who had just discovered that his bird had flown, appeared at the window.

“He’s got out,” he said reproachfully.  “Look at him.  He’s got out.  An’ all our trouble for nothing.  Why di’n’t someone stop him gettin’ out?”

* * * * *

William and Ginger sat on the railing that separated their houses.

“It’s not really much fun bein’ a knight,” said William slowly.

“No,” agreed Ginger.  “You never know when folks is oppressed.  An’ anyway, wot’s one afternoon away from school to make such a fuss about?”

“Seems to me from wot father said,” went on William gloomily, “you’ll have to wait a jolly long time for that drink of ginger-ale.”

An expression of dejection came over Ginger’s face.

“An’ you wasn’t even ever squire,” he said.  Then he brightened.

“They were jolly good cakes, wasn’t they?” he said.

William’s lips curved into a smile of blissful reminiscence.

“Jolly good!” he agreed.

CHAPTER V

WILLIAM’S HOBBY

Uncle George was William’s godfather, and he was intensely interested in William’s upbringing.  It was an interest with which William would gladly have dispensed.  Uncle George’s annual visit was to William a purgatory only to be endured by a resolutely philosophic attitude of mind and the knowledge that sooner or later it must come to an end.  Uncle George had an ideal of what a boy should be, and it was a continual grief to him that William fell so short of this ideal.  But he never relinquished his efforts to make William conform to it.

His ideal was a gentle boy of exquisite courtesy and of intellectual pursuits.  Such a boy he could have loved.  It was hard that fate had endowed him with a godson like William.  William was neither quiet nor gentle, nor courteous nor intellectual—­but William was intensely human.

The length of Uncle George’s visit this year was beginning to reach the limits of William’s patience.  He was beginning to feel that sooner or later something must happen.  For five weeks now he had (reluctantly) accompanied Uncle George upon his morning walk, he had (generally unsuccessfully) tried to maintain that state of absolute quiet that Uncle George’s afternoon rest required, he had in the evening listened wearily to Uncle George’s stories of his youth.  His usual feeling of mild contempt for Uncle George was beginning to give way to one which was much stronger.

“Now, William,” said Uncle George at breakfast, “I’m afraid it’s going to rain to-day, so we’ll do a little work together this morning, shall we?  Nothing like work, is there?  Your Arithmetic’s a bit shaky, isn’t it?  We’ll rub that up.  We love our work, don’t we?”