He received with saint-like patience the eloquence of his elder sister when she found her silk scarf tied into innumerable knots.

“Well, they’re jolly good knots,” was all he said.

He had been looking forward to the holidays for a long time.  He was to “go under canvas” at the end of the first week.

The first day of the holidays began badly.  William’s father had been disturbed by William, whose room was just above and who had spent most of the night performing gymnastics as instructed by his scout-master.

“No, he didn’t say do it at nights, but he said do it.  He said it would make us grow up strong men.  Don’t you want me to grow up a strong man?  He’s ever so strong an’ he did ’em.  Why shun’t I?”

His mother found a pan with the bottom burnt out and at once accused William of the crime.  William could not deny it.

“Well, I was makin’ sumthin’, sumthin’ he’d told us an’ I forgot it.  Well, I’ve got to make things if I’m a scout.  I didn’t mean to forget it.  I won’t forget it next time.  It’s a rotten pan, anyway, to burn itself into a hole jus’ for that.”

At this point William’s father received a note from a neighbour whose garden adjoined William’s and whose life had been rendered intolerable by William’s efforts upon his bugle.

The bugle was confiscated.

Darkness descended upon William’s soul.

“Well,” he muttered, “I’m goin’ under canvas next week an’ I’m jolly glad I’m goin’.  P’r’aps you’ll be sorry when I’m gone.”

He went out into the garden and stood gazing moodily into space, his hands in the pocket of his short scout trousers, for William dressed on any and every occasion in his official costume.

“Can’t even have the bugle,” he complained to the landscape.  “Can’t even use their rotten ole pans.  Can’t tie knots in any of their ole things.  Wot’s the good of bein’ a scout?”

His indignation grew and with it a desire to be avenged upon his family.

“I’d like to do somethin’,” he confided to a rose bush with a ferocious scowl.  “Somethin’ jus’ to show ’em.”

Then his face brightened.  He had an idea.

He’d get lost.  He’d get really lost.  They’d be sorry then alright.  They’d p’r’aps think he was dead and they’d be sorry then alright.  He imagined their relief, their tearful apologies when at last he returned to the bosom of his family.  It was worth trying, anyway.

He set off cheerfully down the drive.  He decided to stay away for lunch and tea and supper, and to return at dusk to a penitent, conscience-stricken family.

He first made his way to a neighbouring wood, where he arranged a pile of twigs for a fire, but they refused to light, even with the aid of the match that William found adhering to a piece of putty in the recess of one of his pockets.

Slightly dispirited, he turned his attention to his handkerchief and tied knots in it till it gave way under the strain.  William’s handkerchiefs, being regularly used to perform the functions of blotting paper among other duties not generally entrusted to handkerchiefs, were always in the last stages of decrepitude.