William had a strong imagination.  When an idea took hold upon his mind, it was almost impossible for him to let it go.  He was quite accustomed to Joan’s adoring homage.  The scornful mockery of his auburn-haired friend was something quite new, and in some strange fashion it intrigued and fascinated him.  Mentally he recalled her excited little face, flushed with eagerness as she described the expected spread.  Mentally also he conceived a vivid picture of the long waiting on Christmas Eve, the slowly fading hope, the final bitter disappointment.  While engaging in furious snowball fights with Ginger, Douglas, and Henry, while annoying peaceful passers-by with well-aimed snow missiles, while bruising himself and most of his family black and blue on long and glassy slides along the garden paths, while purloining his family’s clothes to adorn various unshapely snowmen, while walking across all the ice (preferably cracked) in the neighbourhood and being several times narrowly rescued from a watery grave—­while following all these light holiday pursuits, the picture of the little auburn-haired girl’s disappointment was ever vividly present in his mind.

The day of his party drew near.

“My party,” he would echo bitterly when anyone of his family mentioned it.  “I don’t want it.  I don’t want ole Johnnie Brent an’ all that lot.  I’d just like to un-invite ’em all.”

“But you want Ginger and Douglas and Henry,” coaxed his Mother.

“I can have them any time an’ I don’t like ’em at parties.  They’re not the same.  I don’t like anyone at parties.  I don’t want a party!”

“But you must have a party, William, to ask back people who ask you.”

William took up his previous attitude.

“Well, where’s the sense of it?” he groaned.

As usual he had the last word, but left his audience unconvinced.  They began on him a full hour before his guests were due.  He was brushed and scrubbed and scoured and cleaned.  He was compressed into an Eton suit and patent leather pumps and finally deposited in the drawing-room, cowed and despondent, his noble spirit all but broken.

The guests began to arrive.  William shook hands politely with three strangers shining with soap, brushed to excess, and clothed in ceremonial Eton suits—­who in ordinary life were Ginger, Douglas, and Henry.  They then sat down and gazed at each other in strained and unnatural silence.  They could find nothing to say to each other.  Ordinary topics seemed to be precluded by their festive appearance and the formal nature of the occasion.  Their informal meetings were usually celebrated by impromptu wrestling matches.  This being debarred, a stiff, unnatural atmosphere descended upon them.  William was a “host,” they were “guests”; they had all listened to final maternal admonitions in which the word “manners” and “politeness” recurred at frequent intervals.  They were, in fact, for the time being, complete strangers.