One thing he did which I thought was very clever.

He played ball by himself.

He was so crazy about ball play that he could never get enough of it.
Miss Laura played all she could with him, but she had to help her mother with the sewing and the housework, and do lessons with her father, for she was only seventeen years old, and had not left off studying.

So Billy would take his ball and go off by himself.

Sometimes he rolled it over the floor, and sometimes he threw it in the air and pushed it through the staircase railings to the hall below.