“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.”
The color prints were very good.
“I’m sending them and an article to the magazines,” said Tim. “This time I’m T. L. Paul. Sometimes I used to pretend all the different people I am were talking together—but now I talk to you instead, Peter.”
“Will it bother the cats if I smoke? Thanks. Nothing I’m likely to set on fire, I hope? Put the house together and let me sit here and look at it. I want to look in through the windows. Put its lights on. There.”
The young architect beamed, and snapped on the little lights.
“Nobody can see in here. I got Venetian blinds; and when I work in here, I even shut them sometimes.”
“If I’m to know all about you, I’ll have to go through the alphabet from A to Z,” said Peter Welles. “This is Architecture. What else in the A’s?”
“Astronomy. I showed you those articles. My calculations proved correct. Astrophysics—I got A in the course, but haven’t done anything original so far. Art, no. I can’t paint or draw very well, except mechanical drawing. I’ve done all the Merit Badge work in scouting, all through the alphabet.”
“Darned if I can see you as a Boy Scout,” protested Welles.
“I’m a very good Scout. I have almost as many badges as any other boy my age in the troop. And at camp I do as well as most city boys.”
“Do you do a good turn every day?”
“Yes,” said Timothy. “Started that when I first read about Scouting—I was a Scout at heart before I was old enough to be a Cub. You know, Peter, when you’re very young, you take all that seriously about the good deed every day, and the good habits and ideals and all that. And then you get older and it begins to seem funny and childish and posed and artificial, and you smile in a superior way and make jokes. But there is a third step, too, when you take it all seriously again. People who make fun of the Scout Law are doing the boys a lot of harm; but those who believe in things like that don’t know how to say so, without sounding priggish and platitudinous. I’m going to do an article on it before long.”
“Is the Scout Law your religion—if I may put it that way?”
“No,” said Timothy. “But ‘a Scout is Reverent.’ Once I tried to study the churches and find out what was the truth. I wrote letters to pastors of all denominations—all those in the phone book and the newspaper—when I was on a vacation in the East, I got the names, and then wrote after I got back. I couldn’t write to people here in the city. I said I wanted to know which church was true, and expected them to write to me and tell me about theirs, and argue with me, you know. I could read library books, and all they had to do was recommend some, I told them, and then correspond with me a little about them.”
“Did they?”
“Some of them answered,” said Tim, “but nearly all of them told me to go to somebody near me. Several said they were very busy men. Some gave me the name of a few books, but none of them told me to write again, and… and I was only a little boy. Nine years old, so I couldn’t talk to anybody. When I thought it over, I knew that I couldn’t very well join any church so young, unless it was my grandparents’ church. I keep on going there—it is a good church and it teaches a great deal of truth, I am sure. I’m reading all I can find, so when I am old enough I’ll know what I must do. How old would you say I should be, Peter?”
“College age,” replied Welles. “You are going to college? By then, any of the pastors would talk to you— except those that are too busy!”
“It’s a moral problem, really. Have I the right to wait? But I have to wait. It’s like telling lies—I have to tell some lies, but I hate to. If I have a moral obligation to join the church as soon as I find it, well, what then? I can’t until I’m eighteen or twenty?”
“If you can’t, you can’t. I should think that settles it. You are legally a minor, under the control of your grandparents, and while you might claim the right to go where your conscience leads you, it would be impossible to justify and explain your choice without giving yourself away entirely—just as you are obliged to go to school until you are at least eighteen, even though you know more than most Ph.D.’s. It’s all part of the game, and He who made you must understand that.”
“I’ll never tell you any lies,” said Tim. “I was getting so desperately lonely—my pen pals didn’t know anything about me really. I told them only what was right for them to know. Little kids are satisfied to be with other people, but when you get a little older you have to make friends, really.”
“Yes, that’s a part of growing up. You have to reach out to others and share thoughts with them. You’ve kept to yourself too long as it is.”
“It wasn’t that I wanted to. But without a real friend, it was only pretense, and I never could let my playmates know anything about me. I studied them and wrote stories about them and it was all of them, but it was only a tiny part of me.”
“I’m proud to be your friend, Tim. Every man needs a friend. I’m proud that you trust me.”
Tim patted the cat a moment in siicnce and then looked up with a grin.
“How would you like to hear my favorite joke?” he asked.
“Very much,” said the psychiatrist, bracing himself for almost any major shock.
“It’s records. I recorded this from a radio program.”
Welles listened. He knew little of music, but the symphony which he heard pleased him. The announcer praised it highly in little speeches before and after each movement. Timothy giggled.
“Like it?”
“Very much. 1 don’t see the joke.”
“I wrote it.”
