"Well, you _said_ put my things on the bed for you to pack an' I've
put them on the bed, an' now you say----"

"I meant clothes."

"Oh, _clothes_!" scornfully. "I never thought of _clothes_."

"Well, you can't take any of these things, anyway."

William hastily began to defend his collection of treasures.

"I _mus'_ have the pop-gun 'cause you never know. There may be pirates
an' smugglers down there, an' you can _kill_ a man with a pop-gun if
you get near enough and know the right place, an' I might need it. An'
I _must_ have the football to play on the sands with, an' the
punchball to practise boxin' on, an' I _must_ have the dormouse,
'cause--'cause to feed him, an' I _must_ have this box of things and
this skin to show to folks I meet down at the seaside, 'cause they're
int'restin'."

But Mrs. Brown was firm, and William reluctantly yielded.

In a moment of weakness, finding that his trunk was only three-quarter
filled by his things, she slipped in his beloved buckskin, while
William himself put the pop-gun inside when no one was looking.

They had been unable to obtain a furnished house, so had to be content
with a boarding house. Mr. Brown was eloquent on the subject.

"If you're deliberately turning that child loose into a boarding-house
full, presumably, of quiet, inoffensive people, you deserve all you
get. It's nothing to do with me. I'm going to have a rest cure. I've
disowned him. He can do as he likes."

"It can't be helped, dear," said Mrs. Brown mildly.

Mr. Brown had engaged one of the huts on the beach chiefly for
William's use, and William proudly furnished its floor with the
buckskin.

"It was killed by my uncle," he announced to the small crowd of
children at the door who had watched with interest his painstaking
measuring of the floor in order to place his treasure in the exact
centre. "He killed it dead--jus' like this."

William had never heard the story of the death of the buck, and
therefore had invented one in which he had gradually come to confuse
himself with his uncle in the role of hero.

"It was walkin' about an' I--he--met it. I hadn't got no gun, and it
sprung at me an' I caught hold of its neck with one hand an' I broke
off its horns with the other, an' I knocked it over. An' it got up an'
ran at me--him--again, an' I jus' tripped it up with my foot an' it
fell over again, an' then I jus' give it one big hit with my fist
right on its head, an' it killed it an' it died