“Have ready guardianship papers for all three,” was the gruff reply.
“What? All three? Are you serious?”
“Certainly. I can do it if I wish, can’t I?” he shouted.
“Why, of course, but-”
Scanlon left precipitately, leaving both Madeline and Miss Martin petrified, the latter with utter stupefaction, the former in a sudden upsurge of happiness. Even the ten-year-olds sensed the change in affairs and subsided into occasional sobs.
Beulah’s surprise, when she met them at the airport and saw three Tweenies where she had expected one, is not to be described. But, on the whole, the surprise was a pleasant one, for little Rose and Blanche took to the elderly housekeeper immediately. Their first greeting was to bestow great, moist kisses upon Beulah’s lined cheeks at which she glowed with joy and kissed them in turn.
With Madeline she was enchanted, whispering to Scanlon that he knew a little more about such matters than he pretended.
“If she had decent hair,” whispered Scanlon in reply, “I’d marry her myself. That I would,” and he smiled in great self• satisfaction.
The arrival at home in mid-afternoon was the occasion of great excitement on the part of the two oldsters. Scanlon inveigled Max into accompanying him on a long walk together in the woods, and when the unsuspecting Max left, puzzled but willing, Beulah busied herself with setting the three newcomers at their ease.
They were shown over the house from top to bottom, the rooms assigned to them being indicated. Beulah prattled away continuously, joking and chaffing, until the Tweenies had lost all their shyness and felt as if they had known her forever.
Then, as the winter evening approached, she turned to Madeline rather abruptly and said, “It’s getting late. Do you want to come downstairs with me and help prepare supper for the men?”
Madeline was taken aback, “The men. Is there, then, someone besides Mr. Scanlon?”
“Oh, yes. There’s Max. You haven’t seen him yet,”
“Is Max a relation of yours?”
“No, child. He’s another of Mr. Scanlon’s wards.”
“Oh, I see.” She blushed and her hand rose involuntarily to her hair.
Beulah saw in a moment the thoughts passing through her head and added in a softer voice, “Don’t worry, dear. He won’t mind your being a Tweenie. He’ll be glad to see you.”
It turned out, though, that “glad” was an entirely inadequate adjective when applied to Max’s emotions at the first sight of Madeline.
He tramped into the house in advance of Scanlon, taking off his overcoat and stamping the snow off his shoes as he did so.
“Oh, boy,” he cried at the half-frozen inventor who followed him in, “why you were so anxious to saunter about on a freezer like today I don’t know.” He sniffed the air appreciatively, “Ah, do I smell lamb chops?” and he made for the dining-room in double-quick time.
It was at the threshold that he stopped suddenly, and gasped for air as if in the last throes of suffocation. Scanlon dipped by and sat down.
“Come on,” he said, enjoying the other’s brick-red visage. ‘Sit down. We have company today. This is Madeline and this s Rose and this is Blanche. And this,” he turned to the seated girls and noted with satisfaction that Madeline’s pink face was burning a fixed glance of confusion upon the plate before her, “is my ward. Max.”
“How do you do,” murmured Max, eyes like saucers, “I’m pleased to meet you.”
Rose and Blanche shouted cheery greetings in reply but Madeline only raised her eyes fleetingly and then dropped them again.
The meal was a singularly quiet one. Max, though he had complained of a ravenous hunger all afternoon, allowed his chop and mashed potatoes to die of cold before him, while Madeline played with her food as if she did not know what it was there for. Scanlon and Beulah ate quietly and well, exchanging sly glances between bites.
Scanlon sneaked off after dinner, for he rightly felt that the more tactful touch of a woman was needed in these matters, and when Beulah joined him in his study some hours later, he saw at a glance that he had been correct.
“I’ve broken the ice,” she said happily, “they’re telling each other their life histories now and are getting along wonderfully. They’re still afraid of each other, though, and insist on sitting at opposite ends of the room, but that’ll wear off-and pretty quickly, too.”
“It’s a fine match, Beulah, eh?”
“A finer one I’ve never seen. And little Rose and Blanche are angels. I’ve just put them to bed.”
There was a short silence, and then Beulah continued softly, “That was the only time you were right and I was wrong- that time you first brought Max into the house and I objected -but that one time makes up for everything else. You are a credit to your dear mother, Jefferson.”
Scanlon nodded soberly, “I wish I could make all Tweenies on earth so happy. It would be such a simple thing. If we treated them like humans instead of like criminals and gave them homes built especially for them and calculated especially for their happiness-”
“Well, why don’t you do it?” interrupted Beulah.
Scanlon turned a serious eye upon the old housekeeper, “That’s exactly what I was leading up to.” His voice lapsed into a dreamy murmur, “Just think. A town of Tweenies-run by them and for them-with its own governing officials and its own schools and its own public utilities. A little world within a world where the Tweenie can consider himself a human being-instead of a freak surrounded and looked down upon by endless multitudes of pure-bloods.”
He reached for his pipe and filled it slowly, “The world owes a debt to one Tweenie which it can never repay-and I owe it to him as well. I’m going to do it. I’m going to create Tweenietown.”
That night he did not go to sleep. The stars turned in their grand circles and paled at last. The grey of dawn came and grew, but still Scanlon sat unmoving-dreaming and planning.
At eighty, age sat lightly upon Jefferson Scanlon’s head. The spring was gone from his step, the sturdy straightness from his shoulders, but his robust health had not failed him, and his mind, beneath the shock of hair, now as white as any Tweenie’s, still worked with undiminished vigor.
A happy life is not an aging one, and for forty years now, Scanlon had watched Tweenietown grow, and in the watching, had found happiness.
He could see it now stretched before him like a large, beautiful painting as he gazed out the window. A little gem of a town with a population of slightly more than a thousand, nestling amid three hundred square miles of fertile Ohio land.
Neat and sturdy houses, wide, clean streets, parks, theatres, schools, stores-a model town, bespeaking decades of intelligent effort and co-operation.
The door opened behind him and he recognized the soft step without needing to turn, “Is that you, Madeline?”
“Yes, father,” for by no other title was he known to any inhabitant of Tweenietown. “Max is returning with Mr. Johanson.”
“That’s good,” he gazed at Madeline tenderly. “We’ve seen Tweenietown grow since those days long ago, haven’t we?”
Madeline nodded and sighed.
“Don’t sigh, dear. It’s been well worth the years we’ve given to it. If only Beulah had lived to see it now.”
He shook his head as he thought of the old housekeeper, dead now a quarter of a century.
“Don’t think such sad thoughts,” admonished Madeline in her turn. “Here comes Mr. Johanson. Remember it’s the fortieth anniversary and a happy day; not a sad one.”
Charles B. Johanson was what is known as a “shrewd” man. That is, he was an intelligent, far-seeing person, comparatively well-versed in the sciences, but one who was wont to put these good qualities into practice only in order to advance his own interest. Consequently, he went far in politics and was the first appointee to the newly created Cabinet post of Science and Technology.
It was the first official act of his to visit the world’s greatest scientist and inventor, Jefferson Scanlon, who, in his old age, still had no peer in the number of useful inventions turned over to the government every year. Tweenietown was a considerable surprise to him. It was known rather vaguely in the outside world that the town existed, and it was considered a hobby of the old scientist-a harmless eccentricity. Johanson found it a well-worked-out project of sinister connotations.