The Clockwork Twin (18 page)

XIV
What Does R Stand For?

Byram was grateful to his rescuers, although he said that he didn't think he would have had much trouble escaping from the gypsies, who didn't suspect how well he was able to take care of himself. They had captured him as he was fishing in the canal and had intended to keep him to work for them. The Beans welcomed him warmly, and he was grateful to them, too, for their offer of a home, but although he promised that he wouldn't run away, he had lived alone so long and seemed so unhappy in the house that finally Mr. Bean built a little cabin down in the woods, and he and Georgie moved down there.

On the first day Byram and Adoniram had a long talk. Byram agreed that they might be brothers. “But how are we going to find out?” he asked.

“Well,” said Adoniram, “our middle names both begin with R, and if they are both the same, I think that would prove it pretty well, don't you?”

“Yes,” said Byram. “What does your R stand for?”

“Well, I never tell anybody that,” said Adoniram. “It's so silly. Why don't you tell me yours?”

“I won't do that either,” said Byram.

“But if they're the same—” said Adoniram.

“You tell me yours and I'll tell you if it's the same.”

“Yes, but suppose it isn't. Then I'd have told you. Now, if you'll just tell me yours, if it's different I promise I won't ever tell anybody else.”

“Well, I'll promise not to tell, if you tell me yours and it's different.”

“No, I can't do that.”

“Neither can I.”

So as neither would tell first, they didn't find out much that way.

Except on this one point, however, they agreed on everything—and indeed I suppose they agreed on this, too, if you look at it that way. They were fast friends in a week, and they fished and played and hiked together. Sometimes Adoniram stayed all night at the cabin, but Byram would never stay all night up at the house, although Mrs. Bean asked him to sometimes.

Byram was pretty suspicious of grown-ups, and I don't know that you can blame him, for, except at the orphanage, all those he had ever met had tried to shut him up and make him work for them. But after a while, when he saw that the Beans let him alone and didn't try to take advantage of him, he stopped being suspicious of them. And he would talk to them about his adventures and answer any questions they asked. But still he wouldn't live in the house, nor tell Adoniram what the R stood for.

One day a letter came for Adoniram from Dr. Murdock in Snare Forks. “I have been trying to find out where you came from and who your people were,” it said, “but although I got on the track of them, I haven't much information to give you. There was a family living in the city, and during the big flood of six or seven years ago their house was carried away and they were never seen again. They had two little boys, and their names were Byram and Adoniram. But I can't find out what their last name was. It was kind of a funny name, but everybody who remembers them says it began with R.”

Adoniram took the letter down to Byram's cabin and they talked a long time about it and agreed that there wasn't much doubt but that they were the two little boys.

“And if the R in our names stands for the same thing, it's certain,” said Adoniram.

“If there was only some way,” said Byram, “that we could find out without one of us telling the other first, we'd know.”

“But there isn't.”

“No, I guess there isn't.”

“Well, listen,” said Georgie. “I'll get the telephone book and you can show me where the names beginning with R are—because I can't read—and then I will point to all of them in turn. I'll take Adoniram first. Then if we find the name, I won't know what it is, because Adoniram will just nod his head when I point to it. Then I will go through the R's with Byram, and if he nods at the same one, we'll know they're the same. But if you nod at different ones, we'll have to think of some other way.”

“Yes,” said Adoniram, “but suppose some time later on you do learn to read. Then you'll know what our names are.”

“I can't learn,” said the dog. “I'm too dumb.”

“But you might show them to somebody else and find out what they were,” said Byram.

“Not if I promised not to.”

So they decided to try it, and Georgie went up to the house and got the book. And he went through the R's from Rabinowitz to Ryzinski, with both of them. But their names were not there.

When they told Freddy about this, he said: “Well, how do you know your names begin with Ranyway?”

Both the boys said they sounded like it.

“But has it occurred to you that they might sound like it and still not begin with R? Take the word ‘gnaw,' for instance. That sounds as if it began with n, but it really begins with g.”

“Do you know any names that begin with something else, but sound as if they began with R?” asked Byram.

Freddy said he didn't, but he'd bet there were some. He went back to his study and spent several hours in research. Then he came back, tired but triumphant, to announce that he had found two names: Wrench and Wrigglesworth. So then Georgie went through the names beginning with Wr, but their names were not in there either.

All the animals on the farm were interested in this search for a name, and curious to know what the boys' name really was. But there wasn't much they could do about it. Freddy spent a lot of time looking up names, and whenever he found a new one he would write it down, and then Georgie would go over the lists he made with the boys. He found a lot of silly-sounding names that began with R, such as Ratty, Rhoscomyl and Rindervieh, but none of them were right.

Of course now that Byram was found, it didn't matter so much about the name. What did matter was the reward for finding him. So many people had helped—the hawk, and Mrs. Church, and the chauffeur and the mice and the ducks and Adoniram and all the people who had written about seeing him on the canal. And then nothing had been said about what the reward was to be. The handbills had just said: “a suitable reward.”

There was a good deal of talk about it in the barnyard. Some were for having Uncle Ben make medals for everybody concerned, and others felt that a cash reward would be best. Still others thought that a ticket to Mr. Boomschmidt's circus would be nice. At last it was decided to give all three. The animals still had some money left out of the bag of gold they had found on their first trip to Florida. Byram went through the letters and picked out twenty-five from people who he thought might really have seen him, and then Freddy sent two dollars and a circus ticket to each of them. Then Uncle Ben made some medals. They had an automobile on one side, with the words: “Bean-Church Expeditionary Force,” and on the other, the name of the animal and the words: “Awarded for distinguished service in the Black River Campaign,” and the date. A medal was given to each one who had gone on the trip to the Black River Canal, including Adoniram, Mrs. Church, and the chauffeur, and they saved one for the hawk. So far he has never come back for it. But even though he doesn't think much of rewards, if he sees this story I hope he will stop in at the Bean farm some fall on his way south, and get it. It is a nice thing to have.

“One thing I think we really ought to do,” said Freddy. “We ought to replace Mrs. Church's jewelry.” So he and Adoniram went in to the tencent store in Centerboro and bought three dollars' worth of diamonds and pearls, and the next time Mrs. Church came to call they presented them to her. She was as pleased as anything. She put them all on and went in and had her picture taken and sent copies to everybody. Freddy had his framed and hung it up in his study beside the pictures of Abraham Lincoln and Sherlock Holmes.

The two boys had a fine time that summer. Whenever Ronald wasn't busy, they got Bertram to play with them. He was a pretty good playmate because he never got tired. The animals laughed when they saw the three of them together, they all looked so much alike.

“It tickles me every time I see 'em,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “They're nice boys, and as good as gold, all three of 'em. Even Bertram.”

“He's only a rooster at heart,” said Jinx.

“I suppose you mean he's chicken-hearted,” said the cow. “I never did like that expression. Take Charles, now. He's no coward, except where Henrietta is concerned.”

“Yes,” said Jinx. “We're all cowards where she's concerned. Believe me I don't want to get her sore at me.”

But Mrs. Bean was not entirely satisfied with the way things were going, and one evening at supper when the boys were picnicking at the cabin, she said to Mr. Bean: “Mr. B., I'm worried about Byram. It's all right for him to live down in the woods this summer, but what's he going to do this winter?”

“Why, I dunno, Mrs. B.,” said Mr. Bean, taking a fourth helping of apple pie. “He's a good boy and can take care of himself. I can put that little stove down there for him if he wants to stay there. He could keep comfortable, seems like. Why don't you leave him be?”

“'Tain't right,” said Mrs. Bean, “and you know'tain't right. Not when we got this big comfortable house, and nobody in it but us and Uncle Ben and Adoniram.”

Mr. Bean couldn't answer for a minute, as he had the fourth helping of pie in his mouth. But pretty soon he reached out for a fifth helping, and said: “Well, the way I look at it, Mrs. B., the boy's happy. Leave him be.”

“You better leave that pie be,” said Mrs. Bean, “or
you
won't be very happy,” And she picked up the pie and took it into the pantry.

So Mr. Bean finished up the cheese and part of a cake and half a dozen cookies and then he went out with Uncle Ben to see if they could find a few ripe raspberries to top off with.

But the next day Mrs. Bean sent Adoniram on an errand, and she went down to the cabin to see Byram. The boy was glad to see her, for he liked and trusted Mrs. Bean, and he showed her around, and she thought everything was fine.

“You've certainly got the place fixed up nice,” she said. “And Mr. Bean's going to bring down that little stove, so you'll be snug as a bug in a rug this winter.”

Byram looked at her a minute, and he said: “You—you aren't going to make me come up to the house?”

“Why, no,” said Mrs. Bean. “You don't want to live in the house. And in fact I'd rather you didn't. So that's all right.”

“You mean you didn't—you don't
want
me to live in the house?”

“Well, you don't want to, do you?”

“N-no,” said Byram doubtfully, for it was a different thing if Mrs. Bean would rather not have him there. Always before, people had insisted on his living with them. He began to wonder if maybe it wouldn't be rather nice in the house.

“Well,” said Mrs. Bean, “I just thought it was nice we both felt the same way. I don't know just why I feel that way. I like you. You're a nice boy, and I hope you'll always stay with us. But—Oh, I don't know, I suppose I feel about it just the way you do about living there. I don't know as I could tell why any better than you could. Or maybe you could?”

Byram waited to see if she meant to ask him a question, but she just sat on the old chair by the cabin door and looked off into the woods. So Byram began to think. There had always been pretty good reasons why he hadn't wanted to live in other houses. People had been unkind to him; they had made him work hard, scolded him. But as soon as he began to think why he didn't want to live in the Beans' house, he found that there weren't any reasons.

“Why,” he said suddenly, “I
do
want to live there!”

“I like to hear the thrushes singing in the woods along toward evening,” she said. “Like little fairy bells, I always think. Excuse me, what did you say, Byram?”

“I just said I
do
want to live in the house,” repeated the boy.

“You do,” said Mrs. Bean. “Well, I thought maybe you might. You see, you haven't had a very good time living with people, and so you just decided you didn't want to. I don't blame you a bit. I wouldn't either. But people are different. And I thought maybe once you began to think about it, you'd see that it might be pretty nice living in the house with Adoniram and Uncle Ben and Mr. Bean and me. We have a pretty good time. Maybe you'd have a good time too. And if you didn't,—well, you can always come back here if you want to.”

So the next day Byram moved up to the house. He and Adoniram kept the little cabin to play in, and Mr. Bean put the stove in anyway, so they could use it in winter if they wanted to.

XV
Bertram, Byram and Adoniram

There is no animal more curious than a pig, and Freddy was no exception. Perhaps that is why he was such a good detective. He just couldn't stop wondering if Adoniram and Byram were brothers, and what the R in their names stood for. Always a very sound sleeper, who snored away gently nine hours every night, it had got so that he hardly dropped off to sleep before he was broad wide awake again, wondering. And even when he dreamed, it was about names beginning with R.