William The Outlaw Read Online Free PDF

him sort of singing as he
mixed the things? He was making spells over them.’
    The Outlaws were, outwardly at least, still sceptical.
    ‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff,’ said William once more with masculine superiority. ‘I tell you there aren’t any.’
    But there was a fascination about the sight and they were loth to go far from it.
    ‘Let’s go back an’ see what he’s doin’ now,’ said Ginger, and eagerly they accepted the proposal. The hole in the hedge was conveniently large, the bushes by
the window afforded a convenient shelter and all would have gone well had not Mr Galileo Simpkins been engaged on the simple task of washing out some test tubes in a cupboard just outside the
Outlaws’ line of vision. This was more than they could endure.
    ‘What’s he doin ’?’ said William in a voice of agonised suspense.
    But none of them could see what he was doing.
    ‘I’ll go out,’ said Ginger with a heroic air. ‘I bet he won’t see me.’
    So Ginger crept out of the shelter of the bushes and advanced boldly to the window. Too boldly – for Mr Galileo Simpkins, turning suddenly, saw, to his great surprise and indignation, a
small boy with an exceedingly impertinent face standing in his garden and staring rudely at him through his window. Mr Galileo Simpkins hated small boys, especially small boys with impertinent
faces. With an unexpected agility he leapt to the window and threw it open. Ginger fled in terror to the gate. Mr Galileo Simpkins shook his fist after him.
    ‘All right, you wait , my boy, you wait !’ he called.
    By this time he wanted the boy with the impertinent face to understand that he was going to find out who he was and tell his father. He was going to put a stop to that sort of thing once and for
all. He wasn’t going to have boys with impertinent faces wandering about his garden and looking through his windows. He’d frighten them off now – at once. ‘You wait !’ he shouted again with vague but terrible menace in his voice.
    Then he returned to his lab well pleased with himself.
    The Outlaws crept back through the hole in the hedge and met Ginger in the road. They looked at Ginger as one might look at someone who has returned from the jaws of death. Ginger, now that the
danger was over, rather enjoyed his position.
    ‘ Well ,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘did you see him an’ hear him? I bet he’d’ve killed me if he’d caught me.’
    ‘Blown you up,’ said Douglas.
    ‘Turned you into something,’ said Joan.
    ‘Wonder what he meant by saying ‘Wait’ like that?’ said William meditatively.
    ‘He meant that he was goin’ to put a spell on you,’ said Joan composedly.
    Ginger went rather pale.
    ‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff,’ said William.
    ‘All right,’ said Joan, ‘just you wait and see.’
    So they waited and they saw.
    It was, of course, a coincidence that that night Ginger’s mother’s cook had made trifle for supper and that Ginger ate of this not wisely, but too well, and was the next morning
confined to bed with what the doctor called ‘slight gastric trouble’.
    The Outlaws called for him the next morning and were curtly informed by the housemaid (who, like Mr Galileo Simpkins, hated all boys on principle) that Ginger was ill in bed and would not be
getting up that day.
    They walked away in silence.
    ‘ Well ,’ said Joan in triumph, ‘what do you think about him being a magician now? ’
    This time William did not say ‘Soppy fairy-tale stuff.’
    Ginger returned to them, somewhat pale and wobbly, the next day. Like them he preferred to lay the blame of his enforced retirement on to Mr Galileo Simpkins, rather than upon
the trifle.
    ‘Yes, that’s what he said,’ agreed Ginger earnestly. ‘He said, ‘you wait,’ an’ then jus’ about an hour after that I began to feel orful pains.
An’ I hadn’t had hardly any of that ole trifle . . . well, not much, anyway; well, not too much . . . well, not as much as I often have of