"Catch the old villain before he makes off," said Mr. Beal, and they hastened on to the hedge at the end of the garden and looked over it. There a glorious sight met their eyes. Dick the Dauntless was fighting for his life against hundreds of foes. He punched and butted and dodged and closed. Thousands fell at each stroke. He was dimly aware of three heads watching him over the hedge, but he had no time to look at them. He heard vague sounds, such as:
Albert, with a bewildered cry of "Oh, 'elp!" and a bleeding nose, began to run off towards home. There was very little left of Dick the Dauntless, but with a desperate effort he flung Leopold into the ditch, whence Leopold crawled forth and followed Albert. Only Sam was left. Sam was large and no coward, and, in spite of a bruised eye, would have kept up the fight longer had not Cæsar appeared.
One glance at Cæsar was enough for Sam. Echoing Albert's cry of "Oh, 'elp!" he fled for dear life down the road. Then Dick the Dauntless vanished, and William, his collar burst, his tie streaming, his coat torn, his ear bleeding, turned to survey his audience of three from a quickly-closing eye.
William, in his pyjamas, pondered for a moment over the mystery of human life as he bestowed those few perfunctory brushes upon his shock of hair that constituted its evening toilet. He had that day committed almost every crime known to boyhood.
He had spoilt his collar and tie and coat, and acquired a thoroughly disreputable black eye.
Finally, turning from these crimes, fully expecting to meet with retribution at the hands of his family, he had been acclaimed as a hero. He was bewildered. He did not understand it. He did not know why he was a hero instead of a criminal. Anyway, it wasn't worth bothering over, and, anyway, he was going to have a jolly fine black eye, he thought proudly. He turned a somersault from his chair to his bed, which was his normal manner of entering it, and drew the clothes up to his chin. Before he finally surrendered to the power of sleep, he summed up his chief impressions of the evening.
"They're jolly queer, grown-ups are," he said, sleepily. "Jolly queer!"
THE person who was ultimately to blame was the secretary of the Dramatic Society of the school of which William was a humble member. The Dramatic Society had given an historical play in which Christopher Columbus was depicted among the aborigines of America. William was too unimportant a member of the institution which served him out his daily ration of education to figure on the stage, but he was a delighted spectator in the back row. Christopher Columbus interested him not at all. Christopher Columbus was white, and except for his rather curious and violently anachronistic costume, looked exactly as the postman or William's own father might look. But the aborigines! William could not take his eyes from them. They were Jones Minor and Pinchin Major and Goggles, and all that crew. Of course he knew that. Yet how different--how rapturously different. Browned from head to foot--a lovely walnut brown. It made their eyes look queer and their teeth look queer. It set them in a world apart. It must feel ripping. William decided then and there that his life's happiness could never be complete till he had browned himself like that. He wondered whether brown boot polish would do it. Knife polish might. Something must.