William S. and the Great Escape by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page A

Sir Toby Belch, stayed out late and drank too much and had good-for-nothing friends. Probably a Baggett ancestor, William decided.
    But it wasn’t easy to keep his mind on what he was reading with all the other things that were going on in the basement. Jancy was talking to Ursa, Trixie was talking to the Shirley Temple doll and pretending to be the doll talking back to her, and the tin clown kept clanking up and down the cement floor. After a while, William gave up on Shakespeare for the time being and asked Jancy to help him make lunch. Making and eating the cheese sandwiches didn’t take long, and then William was back to trying to ignore everything except Shakespeare .
    But it got harder and harder to keep his mind on what he was reading. Trixie and Buddy got bored with the toys and started romping around the basement with Ursa. And when they were tired of that, they started whimpering and whining. Trixie whimpered and Buddy whined.
    â€œCan we go play outside, Willum?” Buddy whined. And when William said no, he switched to “Why?” His all-time favorite word. William had kept count once— the score was thirty-seven whys in five minutes.
    â€œWow. They’re driving me crazy,” William told Jancy.
    â€œYeah, me too,” she said. She tipped her head to one side and thought a moment. “Why don’t you read to them?”
    â€œMe?” William laughed. “I don’t have anything to read—except Shakespeare .”
    â€œI know that,” Jancy said. “Why don’t you read Shakespeare?”
    He laughed. “Read Shakespeare to those two? I don’t think so.”
    Jancy nodded. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Most people couldn’t. But I’ll bet you could. When they don’t understand, you could kind of act it out. You know, like you did in the play.”
    That was a shock. “How’d you find out about the play?” he demanded.
    Jancy grinned. “I saw you do it. Twice. I ditched class twice and snuck over to the high school all by myself. I sat way back in the last row, but I could tell that you were a really good Ariel, and everybody thought what you did was the best part of the whole play.”
    William was amazed. “You never told me you saw it,” he said accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Jancy looked away. She didn’t say anything for several minutes, and when she did, wide-eyed and solemn, it was just, “Why didn’t
you
? Why didn’t
you
tell
me
?”
    There were things that might have been said. Things about how afraid he’d been that the rest of the Baggetts would find out and ruin everything, but he knew that wouldn’t be good enough. Finally, all he said was, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
    Jancy grinned. “That’s okay. I liked seeing it anyway. And I bet Trixie and Buddy will too.”
    And that was how it happened that William began to read and recite, and actually act out, parts of The Tempest by William Shakespeare in the middle of the afternoon in the basement of a brown-shingled house on Gardenia Street.
    Jancy had lined everybody up—the two kids, herself, and even Ursa—like the front row of an audience. When they were all in line and quiet, William began.
    â€œThe first scene of The Tempest ,” he said, “takes place on a ship, and there’s this tempest. That’s like a really big storm, with thunder and lightning and high winds. And everybody thinks they’re going to drown. Right at first there are just these sailors running around trying to fix the sails and—”
    â€œAnd right there on the stage,” Jancy interrupted, “the actors who are pretending to be sailors are rocking back and forth like they’re on a boat, and the big wind is blowing canvas sails and everything around all over the stage. It was real scary.” She turned to William. “How’d they