William The Conqueror
CHAPTER 1
ENTER THE SWEEP
WILLIAM and the sweep took to one another at once.
William liked the sweep’s colouring, and the sweep liked William’s conversation. William looked up to the sweep as a being of a superior order.
‘Didn’t your mother mind you being a sweep?’ he said wonderingly, as the sweep unpacked his brushes.
‘N-naw,’ said the sweep, slowly and thoughtfully. ‘Leastways, she didn’t say nothin’.’
‘You don’t want a partner, do you?’ said William. ‘I wun’t mind being a sweep. I’d come an’ live with you an’ go round with you every day.’
‘Thanks,’ said the man, ‘but p’raps your pa would have somethin’ to say.’
William laughed bitterly and scornfully.
‘Oh, yes, they’d fuss. They fuss if I get a bit of mud on my boots. As if their ole drawin’-room carpet mattered. Have you any little boys?’
‘Yus, three,’ said the sweep.
‘I s’pose they’ll all be sweeps,’ said William gloomily, feeling that the profession was becoming overcrowded.
‘Come out of that room, Master William,’ called cook, who, in the absence of William’s parents, took what William considered a wholly unjustifiable interest in him.
William extended his tongue in the direction of the voice. Otherwise he ignored it.
‘I’d meant to be a robber,’ went on William, ‘but I think I’d as soon be a sweep. Or I might be a sweep first, an’ then a robber.’
‘Come out of that room, Master William,’ called cook.
William simulated deafness.
‘I’d like to be a sweep an’ a robber an’ a detective an’ a soldier, an’ some more things. I think I’d better be them about a year each, so’s I can get ’em all in.’
‘Um,’ said the sweep. ‘There’s somethin’ in that.’
Cook appeared in the doorway.
‘Didn’t you hear me telling you to come out of that room, Master William?’ she said pugnaciously.
‘You can’t expect me to hear you when you go shoutin’ about in the kitchen,’ said William loftily. ‘I just heard you shoutin’.’
‘Well, come out of this room, anyway.’
‘How can you expect me to know how it’s done if I don’t stay to watch? Wot’s the good of me goin’ to be a sweep if I don’t know how it’s done?’
‘What’s the good of me covering up all the furniture if you’re going to stay here getting black as pitch? Are you coming out?’
‘No,’ said William exasperated, ‘I’ve gotter stay an’ learn. It’s just the same as Robert goin’ to college – my stayin’ to watch the sweep. Wot’s the good of me bein’ a sweep if I don’t learn? Folks prob’ly wun’t pay me if I didn’t know how to do it, and then what’d I do?’
‘Very well, Master William,’ said cook with treacherous sweetness, ‘I’ll tell your pa when he comes in that you stayed in here with the sweep when your ma said most speshful you wasn’t to.’
William reconsidered this aspect of affairs.
‘All right, Crabbie,’ he said grudgingly. ‘An’ I hope that I jolly well spoil your chimney when I’m a sweep with not knowing how to do it.’
He wandered round the house and watched through the window. It was a thrilling performance. He was lost in roseate dreams of himself pursuing the gloriously dirty calling of chimney sweep when the sweep appeared with a heavy sack.
‘Where shall I put the soot?’ he said.
William considered. There was a nice bit of waste ground behind the summer-house. He looked carefully round to make sure that his arch-enemy cook was nowhere in sight.
‘Jus’ here,’ he said, leading the sweep round to the summer-house.
The sweep emptied the sack. It was a soft grey-black pile. William thrilled with the pride of possession.
‘That’s mine, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Well, it’s not mine,’ said the sweep jocularly. ‘You can ’ave it to practise on.’
He left William smiling proudly above his pile.
From over the wall behind the summer-house William could see the road. He waved his hand effusively to the sweep as he passed on his little cart.
‘I say,’ called William.
The sweep drew up.
‘Does the horse an’ cart cost much?’ said William anxiously.
‘Oh no,’ said the sweep. ‘You can get ’em dirt cheap. I’ll lend you this ’ere of mine when you go into the business.’
With a facetious wink he drove on, and William returned to the contemplation of his pile of soot.