The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [10]
“Ah, yes!” she said as she shook hands with Jupe. “I remember. You’re the nice young man who was so good to Eleanor. You know, I thought at the time you’re so like my dear Charles. Charles Collinwood, that is. My last husband, and really my favourite. Such a kind man, although a bit inclined to be chubby.”
Mrs. Collinwood was a talker, and the boys realized quickly that she was off and running. There was little they could do except be still and let the torrent of words wash over them.
Mrs. Collinwood happily told them about her first husband, who had sold insurance, and her second husband, who had been a film editor, and about Charles, her favourite husband, who had been a veterinarian.
“Not that they weren’t all dear men,” said Mrs. Collinwood. “They all died young.
So sad. Then I came to live here as housekeeper for the foundation. The scientists were frightening at first. So stern, and always thinking. But once you get to know them, not so different from other men. Dear Dr. Terreano always talks about how violent humans are, but he’s so kind he wouldn’t swat a fly. And Dr. Brandon insists we aren’t violent, and yet he has such a temper. He shouldn’t spend so much time with your Uncle Newt, Eleanor. It only upsets him.”
“I know,” said Eleanor meekly.
Mrs. Collinwood trotted away then, and the young man who was washing the windows dropped his brush into his bucket of water. “You giving your friends the ten-dollar tour?” he asked Eleanor.
She looked annoyed, but she introduced him. “This is Frank,” she said. “Frank DiStefano. He helps out here at the foundation, like I do.”
The young man grinned. “Hi. Glad to meet you. Ellie, I’m sorry about last night. I got a flat tyre and it held me up until … well, it was so late I figured you wouldn’t still be waiting.”
“It’s not important,” said Eleanor, and she led the boys out through the library, which was next to the living room, and then through a little square entryway on the far side of the house.
The stable was about fifty metres from the house. Eleanor marched to it without speaking. Once she was with Blaze, the horse that had been Dr. Birkensteen’s special charge, her mood changed, and again she seemed happier. She groomed the horse and talked to it and petted it, and she proudly showed the boys how it could add. She put four apples on the partition around its stall.
“How many?” she said.
The horse stamped four times.
“There you go!” Eleanor applauded and then fed the apples to the horse.
The boys left Eleanor in the stable and went back down the hill and into town for lunch. The streets were more crowded than ever. The boys decided to pass up the dinosaur burger stand, but they had to wait almost an hour before they could get their hamburgers at the Lazy Daze Cafe.
After they ate, they wandered through the town, observing the crowds and noting the measures the shopkeepers had taken to celebrate the opening of the cave the next day. Several display windows were decorated with chalky drawings of cave men dressed in animal skins and carrying clubs. In one picture the cave man dragged a delighted cave woman along by her hair. Several store fronts were decorated with red, white and blue bunting. In the little park, where the opening ceremonies for the cave man museum would take place the next day, women were hanging paper lanterns from the trees while a man put a fresh coat of white paint on the old-fashioned bandstand. An ice cream vendor did a brisk business from a truck parked near the old train station.
After a while the boys returned to the meadow behind Newt McAfee’s house.
There was excitement and bustle there too. A tall, stringy man in faded work clothes was stowing a tool kit in the back of a van, muttering to himself as he worked.
“Not right,” he declared. “Not right at all. They’ll be sorry.