“And Miss Page thought it was odd that you had no close friends of your own age,” said Welles. “You must be the loneliest boy that ever walked this earth, Tim. You’ve lived in hiding like a criminal. But tell me, what are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of being found out, of course. The only way I can live in this world is in disguise—until I’m grown up, at any rate. At first it was just my grandparents’ scolding me and telling me not to show off, and the way people laughed if I tried to talk to them. Then I saw how people hate anyone who is better or brighter or luckier. Some people sort of trade off; if you’re bad at one thing you’re good at another, but they’ll forgive you for being good at some things, if you’re not good at others so they can balance it off. They can beat you at something. You have to strike a balance. A child has no chance at all. No grownup can stand it to have a child know anything he doesn’t. Oh, a little thing if it amuses them. But not much of anything. There’s an old story about a man who found himself in a country where everyone else was blind. I’m like that—but they shan’t put out my eyes. I’ll never let them know I can see anything.”
“Do you see things that no grown person can see?”
Tim waved his hand towards the magazines.
“Only like that, I meant. I hear people talking in street cars and stores, and while they work, and around. I read about the way they act—in the news. I’m like them, just like them, only I seem about a hundred years older—more matured.”
“Do you mean that none of them have much sense?”
“I don’t mean that exactly. I mean that so few of them have any, or show it if they do have. They don’t even seem to want to. They’re good people in their way, but what could they make of me? Even when I was seven, I could understand their motives, but they couldn’t understand their own motives. And they’re so lazy—they don’t seem to want to know or to understand. When I first went to the library for books, the books I learned from were seldom touched by any of the grown people. But they were meant for ordinary grown people. But the grown people didn’t want to know things—they only wanted to fool around. I feel about most people the way my grandmother feels about babies and puppies. Only she doesn’t have to pretend to be a puppy all the time,” Tim added, with a little bitterness.
“You have a friend now, in me.”
“Yes, Peter,” said Tim, brightening up. “And I have pen friends, too. People like what I write, because they can’t see I’m only a little boy. When I grow up—”
Tim did not finish that sentence. Welles understood, now, some of the fears that Tim had not dared to put into words at all. When he grew up, would he be as far beyond all other grownups as he had, all his life, been above his contemporaries? The adult friends whom he now met on fairly equal terms—would they then, too, seem like babies or puppies?
Peter did not dare to voice the thought, either. Still less did he venture to hint at another thought. Tim, so far, had no great interest in girls; they existed for him as part of the human race, but there would come a time when Tim would be a grown man and would wish to marry. And where among the puppies could he find a mate?
“When you’re grown up, we’ll still be friends,” said Peter. “And who are the others?”
It turned out that Tim had pen friends all over the world. He played chess by correspondence—a game he never dared to play in person, except when he forced himself to move the pieces about idly and let his opponent win at least half the time. He had, also, many friends who had read something he had written, and had written to him about it, thus starting a correspondence-friendship. After the first two or three of these, he had started some on his own account, always with people who lived at a great distance. To most of these he gave a name which, although not false, looked it. That was Paul T. Lawrence. Lawrence was his middle name; and with a comma after the Paul, it was actually his own name. He had a post office box under that name, for which T. Paul of the large bank account was his reference.
“Pen friends abroad? Do you know languages?”
Yes, Tim did. He had studied by correspondence, also; many universities gave extension courses in that manner, and lent the student records to play so that he could learn the correct pronunciation. Tim had taken several such courses, and learned other languages from books. He kept all these languages in practice by means of the letters to other lands and the replies which came to him.
“I’d buy a dictionary, and then I’d write to the mayor of some town, or to a foreign newspaper, and ask them to advertise for some pen friends to help me learn the language. We’d exchange souvenirs and things.”
Nor was Welles in the least surprised to find that Timothy had also taken other courses by correspondence. He had completed, within three years, more than half the subjects offered by four separate universities, and several other courses, the most recent being Architecture. The boy, not yet fourteen, had completed a full course in that subject, and had he been able to disguise himself as a full-grown man, could have gone out at once and built almost anything you’d like to name, for he also knew much of the trades involved.
“It always said how long an average student took, and I’d take that long,” said Tim, “so, of course, I had to be working several schools at the same time.”
“And carpentry at the playground summer school?”
“Oh, yes. But there I couldn’t do too much, because people could see me. But I learned how, and it made a good cover-up, so I could make cages for the cats, and all that sort of thing. And many boys are good with their hands. I like to work with my hands. I built my own radio, too—it gets all the foreign stations, and that helps me with my languages.”
“How did you figure it out about the cats?” said Welles.
“Oh, there had to be recessives, that’s all. The Siamese coloring was a recessive, and it had to be mated with another recessive. Black was one possibility, and white was another, but I started with black because I liked it better. I might try white too, but I have so much else on my mind—”
He broke off suddenly and would say no more.
Their next meeting was by prearrangement at Tim’s workshop. Welles met the boy after school and they walked to Tim’s home together; there the boy unlocked his door and snapped on the lights.
Welles looked around with interest. There was a bench, a tool chest. Cabinets, padlocked. A radio, clearly not store-purchased. A file cabinet, locked. Something on a table, covered with a cloth. A box in the corner—no, two boxes in two corners. In each of them was a mother cat with kittens. Both mothers were black Persians.
“This one must be all black Persian,” Tim explained. “Her third litter and never a Siamese marking. But this one carries both recessives in her. Last time she had a Siamese shorthaired kitten. This morning—I had to go to school. Let’s see.”
They bent over the box where the new-born kittens lay. One kitten was like the mother. The other two were Siamese-Persian; a male and a female.
“You’ve done it again, Tim!” shouted Welles. “Congratulations!”
They shook hands in jubilation.
“I’ll write it in the record,” said the boy blissfully.
In a nickel book marked “Compositions” Tim’s left hand added the entries. He had used the correct symbols—Fx, F2, F3; Ss, Bl.
“The dominants in capitals,” he explained, “B for black, and S for short hair; the recessives in small letters—s for Siamese, 1 for long hair. Wonderful to write 11 or ss again, Peter! Twice more. And the other kitten is carrying the Siamese marking as a recessive.”
He closed the book in triumph.
“Now,” and he marched to the covered thing on the table, “my latest big secret.”
Tim lifted the cloth carefully and displayed a beautifully built doll house. No, a model house—Welles corrected himself swiftly. A beautiful model, and—yes, built to scale.
“The roof comes off. See, it has a big storage room and a room for a play room or a maid or something. Then I lift off the attic—”
“Good heavens!” cried Peter Welles. “Any little girl would give her soul for this!”
“I used fancy wrapping papers for the wallpapers. I wove the rugs on a little hand loom,” gloated Timothy. “The furniture’s just like real, isn’t it? Some I bought; that’s plastic. Some I made of construction paper and things. The curtains were the hardest; but I couldn’t ask grandmother to sew them—”
“Why not?” the amazed doctor managed to ask.
“She might recognize this afterwards,” said Tim, and he lifted off the upstairs floor.
“Recognize it? You haven’t showed it to her? Then when would she see it?”
“She might not,” admitted Tim. “But I don’t like to take some risks.”
“That’s a very livable floor plan you’ve used,” said Welles, bending closer to examine the house in detail.
“Yes, I thought so. It’s awful how many house plans leave no clear wall space for books or pictures. Some of them have doors placed so you have to detour around the dining room table every time you go from the living room to the kitchen, or so that a whole corner of a room is good for nothing, with doors at all angles. Now, I designed this house to—”
“You designed it, Tim!”
“Why, sure. Oh, I see—you thought I built it from blue-prints I’d bought. My first model home, I did, but the architecture courses gave me so many ideas that I wanted to see how they would look. Now, the cellar and game room—”
Welles came to himself an hour later, and gasped when he looked at his watch.
“It’s too late. My patient has gone home again by this time. I may as well stay—how about the paper route?”
“I gave that up. Grandmother offered to feed the cats as soon as I gave her the kitten. And I wanted the time for this. Here are the pictures of the house.”