Now his thoughts were going over some of its most exquisite moments—­the moments when the pea and the gardener’s head met and rebounded with such satisfactory force; the moment when he swung along the high road, monarch of a caravan and a mule and the whole wide world; the moment when the scarecrow hunched up and collapsed so realistically; the cat covered with green paint....  After all it was his last day.  He saw himself from to-morrow onward leading a quiet and blameless life, walking sedately to school, working at high pressure in school, doing his homework conscientiously in the evening, being exquisitely polite to his family and instructors—­and the vision failed utterly to attract.  Moreover, he hadn’t yet tried turning off the water at the main, or locking the cook into the larder, or—­or hundreds of things.

There came a gentle voice from the garden.

“William, where are you?”

William looked down and met the earnest gaze of Deborah.

“Hello,” he said.

“William,” she said.  “You won’t forget that you’re going to start to-morrow, will you?”

William looked at her firmly.

“I can’t jus’ to-morrow,” he said.  “I’m puttin’ it off.  I’m puttin’ it off for a year or two.”

CHAPTER XIII

WILLIAM AND THE ANCIENT SOULS

The house next William’s had been unoccupied for several months, and William made full use of its garden.  Its garden was in turns a jungle, a desert, an ocean, and an enchanted island.  William invited select parties of his friends to it.  He had come to look upon it as his own property.  He hunted wild animals in it with Jumble, his trusty hound; he tracked Red Indians in it, again with Jumble, his trusty hound; and he attacked and sank ships in it, making his victims walk the plank, again with the help and assistance of Jumble, his trusty hound.  Sometimes, to vary the monotony, he made Jumble, his trusty hound, walk the plank into the rain tub.  This was one of the many unpleasant things that William brought into Jumble’s life.  It was only his intense love for William that reconciled him to his existence.  Jumble was one of the very few beings who appreciated William.

The house on the other side was a much smaller one, and was occupied by Mr. Gregorius Lambkin.  Mr. Gregorius Lambkin was a very shy and rather elderly bachelor.  He issued from his front door every morning at half-past eight holding a neat little attache case in a neatly-gloved hand.  He spent the day in an insurance office and returned, still unruffled and immaculate, at about half past six.  Most people considered him quite dull and negligible, but he possessed the supreme virtue in William’s eyes of not objecting to William.  William had suffered much from unsympathetic neighbours who had taken upon themselves to object to such innocent and artistic objects as catapults and pea-shooters, and cricket balls.  William had a very soft spot in his heart for Mr. Gregorius Lambkin.  William spent a good deal of his time in Mr. Lambkin’s garden during his absence, and Mr. Lambkin seemed to have no objection.  Other people’s gardens always seemed to William to be more attractive than his own—­especially when he had no right of entry into them.