days, just enough time for his new venture. He sold all his remaining Wall Street Journal shares, which netted him only twelve dollars. With this money he bought himself a flat piece of wood, two sets of wheels, axles and a piece of rope, at a cost, after some bargaining, of five dollars. He then put on a flat cloth cap and an old suit he had outgrown and went off to the local railroad station. He stood outside the exit, looking hungry and tired, informing selected travellers that the main hotels in Boston were near the railroad station, so that there was no need to take a taxi or the occasional surviving hansom carriage as he, William, could carry their luggage on his moving board for twenty per cent of what the taxis charged; he added that the walk would also do them good. By working six hours a day, he found he could make roughly four dollars.
Five days before the new school term was due to start, he had made back all his original losses and a further ten dollars profit. He then hit a problem. The taxi drivers were starting to get annoyed with him. William assured them that he would retire, aged nine, if each one of them would give him fifty cents to cover the cost of his home - made trolley - they agreed, and he made another eight dollars fifty cents. On the way home to Beacon Hill, William sold his trolley for five dollars to a school friend two years his senior, who was soon to discover that the market had passed its peak; moreover, it rained for every day of the following week.
On the last day of the holidays, William put his money back on deposit in the bank, at two and a half per cent. During the following term this decision caused him no anxiety as he watched his savings rise steadily. The sinking of the Lusitanza and Wilson's declaration of war against Germany in April of 1917 didn't concern William. Nothing and no one could ever beat America, he assured his mother. William even invested ten dollars in Liberty Bonds to back his judgment, By William's eleventh birthday the credit column of his ledger book showed a profit of four hundred and twelve dollars. He had given his mother a fountain pen and his two grandmothers brooches from a local jewellery shop.
The fountain pen was a Parker and the jewellery arrived at his grandmothers' homes in Shreve, Crump and Low boxes, which he had found after much searching in the dustbins behind the famous store. To do the boy justice, he had not wanted to cheat his grandmothers, but he had already learned from his match - box label experience that good packaging sells products. The grandmothers, who noted the missing Shreve, Crump and Low hallmark still wore their brooches with considerable pride.
The two old ladies continued to follow William's every move and had decided that when he reached the age of twelve, he should proceed as planned to St.
Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. For good measure the boy rewarded them with the top mathematics scholarship, unnecessarily saving the family some three hundred dollars a year. William accepted the scholarship and the grand - mothers returned the money for, as they expressed it, 'a less fortunate child'. Anne hated the thought of William leaving her to go away to boarding school, but the grandmothers insisted and, more importantly, she knew it was what Richard would have wanted. She sewed on William's name tapes, marked his boots, checked his clothes, and finally packed his trunk refusing any help from the servants. When the time came for William to go his mother asked him how much pocket money he would like for the new term ahead of him.
'None,' he replied without further comment.
William kissed his mother on the cheek; he had no idea how much she was going to miss him. He marched off down the path, in his first pair of long trousers, his hair cut very short, carrying a small suitcase towards Roberts, the chauffeur. He climbed into the back of the Rolls - Royce and it drove him away. He didn't look back. His mother waved and waved, and later cried. William wanted to cry too, but he knew his father would not have approved.
The first thing that struck William Kane as strange about his new prep school was that the other boys did not care who