Mr. Pennyman entered just then and said that he would try them both in the skin to see which did the front legs best.
‘But I don’t want to be a dragon with him at all,’ expostulated Pelleas. ‘I don’t like him. He’s a nasty, ugly boy. I’ve been brought up to love beautiful things about me.’
‘He can’t help his appearance,’ said Mr. Pennyman, ‘and he’s a good earnest boy. He’s eager to help to bring back the morning of the world.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Pelleas.
William, anxious to be tried as the dragon’s legs, maintained his expressionless expression though there was a gleam in his eye whenever it rested on Pelleas.
Mr. Pennyman took them both upstairs to the attic where the dragon’s skin was kept. It was a wonderful dragon’s skin, long and green and shiny with glaring eyes and a ferocious open mouth displaying a curving tongue and sharp white teeth. It made William gasp with delight. He knew that unless he were the front legs of this creature life would turn to dust and ashes in his mouth. Mr. Pennyman fetched his sword and they rehearsed the fight. At first they tried Pelleas as the front legs and William as the hind legs, but Pelleas screamed as soon as he caught sight of Mr. Pennyman’s sword and said: ‘Go away. I’ll tell my mother. Go away,’ whenever Mr. Pennyman advanced upon him flourishing it. The engagement between them was unworthy of the name of combat, and so William and Pelleas changed places. William took the front legs and Pelleas the back. And William was superb. Even Mr. Pennyman had to admit that he was superb. He roared and hissed and bellowed. He flung himself upon Mr. Pennyman most realistically, then retired as if beaten back by Mr. Pennyman’s gleaming sword. He crouched and sprang and retreated again, and finally, on receiving the death blow, he writhed and struggled with such effect that Mr. Pennyman, who hadn’t really wanted him to be the front legs, dropped his sword and cried ‘bravissimo.’
So it was arranged that William was to be the front legs and Pelleas the back ones. Pelleas, on hearing the decision, said:
‘I don’t care. He’ll prob’ly get excited an’ stick his sword right through you an’ kill you an’ I shan’t care if he does either.’
There was a right merry scene on May Day on the village green. All the village was assembled, smocks were much in evidence, and the postman had been persuaded to carry the shepherd’s crook. Great trestle tables at one end of the green groaned beneath the weight of flagons of milk and dishes piled high with nut cutlets and proteid sandwiches. The Vicar had sent a note regretting that he could not be present, and saying that important business took him up to town. The performance opened by the crowning of Mrs. Penny man as Queen of the May to the strains of Mr. Pennyman’s flute. Next followed a maypole dance, for which also Mr. Pennyman played on his flute. This was not an unqualified success. Some ribbons got left out altogether; and others got finished up before the thing was half-way through. Moreover, Mrs. Pennyman, who was enthroned within the circle close to the pole in her character of Queen of the May, got entangled in the ribbons and nearly throttled but they managed to get her out alive, and being a true optimist she said with her first returning breath that the dance had been a great success.
Then followed the interval during which a dejected-looking group gathered round the refreshment table, and tried the milk and nut cutlets, to disperse almost immediately looking still more dejected.
Then came the masque of St. George and the dragon. A small hut had been provided as a green room, and from it now issued Mr. Pennyman clad in bright armour and followed by his dragon. The spectators formed a ring, and St. George and the dragon walked round it twice, the dragon’s front legs frisking and curveting in such an undignified fashion that St. George more than once had to rebuke it.
Then they faced each other in the ring for the fight. William was just preparing his roar when Pelleas, in whose heart the sense of inferiority that appertains to the hind legs had been rankling ever since the part had been assigned him, said:
‘Best place for you, inside a dragon where people can’t see you.’
‘Think so?’ said William, foolishly staying to bandy abuse instead of charging his knight.
‘Yes I do.’
‘Well, I’d rather look like what I do than what you do.’
‘Oh you would, would you, Monkey Brand?’
‘Yes I would, little Lord Fauntleroy.’
Neither knew which began it, but suddenly to the amazement of the onlookers the dragon seemed to be taken by a sort of internal spasm. It appeared, in fact, to be writhing in mortal agony. Its front legs and hind legs were fighting. St. George, awaiting its arranged onset, was for a moment nonplussed. Then, realising that as it would not fight him he must fight it, he flung himself upon it rather more heavily than he meant to because he slipped and clutched at it to save himself from falling. William, engaged in a desperate struggle with Pelleas inside the skin, suddenly found himself attacked in the rear. Forgetful of everything else he turned in a fury to repel this fresh attack and the knight found himself suddenly hurled on to the ground. His armour was so arranged upon him that once on his knees he could not rise from them. His enraged dragon, however, seemed still to be advancing upon him with hostile intent, so he began to crawl as best he could to a place of safety. The spectators then beheld the glorious sight of St. George pursued round the ring on all fours by a ferocious dragon, and finally taking refuge from it in the green room hut. Their depression vanished as if by magic.
A deafening cheer went up. Merrie England seemed at last to have arrived.
The Pennymans left the neighbourhood almost immediately afterwards. They said that it was not worthy of the torch.
Most of the villagers held for the rest of their lives a mistaken conception of the issue of the fight between St. George and the dragon, but they always looked back to the day of the masque with feelings of pleasure.
William’s only feeling on the matter was one of regret that he never really finished the fight with Pelleas.
Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in Home magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.
‘Probably the funniest, toughest children’s books ever written’
Sunday Times on the Just William series
‘Richmal Crompton’s creation [has] been famed for his cavalier attitude to life and those who would seek to circumscribe his enjoyment of it ever since he first appeared’
Guardian
Books available in the Just William series
William at War
Just William
More William
William Again
William the Fourth
William at Christmas
Still William
William the Conqueror
William the Outlaw
William in Trouble
William the Good
William
William the Bad
William’s Happy Days
First published in 1930
This selection first published 1984 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-0523-5
All stories copyright © Edward Ashbee and Catherine Massey
This selection copyright © Edward Ashbee and Catherine Massey 1984
Foreword copyright © Anne Fine 2016
Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate
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The text of this book remains true to the original in every way. Some stories may appear out of date to modern-day readers, but are reflective of the language and period in which they were originally written. Macmillan believes changing the content to reflect today’s world would undermine the authenticity of the original, so have chosen to leave the text in its entirety. This does not, however, constitute an endorsement of the characterization and content.
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