Free Through the Hidden Door by Rosemary Wells Page B

cemented together. They made as nice a calf, ankle, and foot as any cabinetmaker’s prize piece. “I had it done by a ship’s carpenter I know,” said Finney. “Over my dead body would the doctors make me wear some ugly thing from a drugstore that sells trusses to people at death’s door. I lemon-oil it once a week. Polish it with a chamois cloth.”
    “Does it come off?” I asked.
    “Sure it does,” Finney answered, “but if I took it off to show you, Dorothy’d have my head. She thinks it’s vulgar.”
    Dr. Dorothy and Snowy had disappeared these two nights, after the supper dishes were cleared, into her enormous laboratory at the back of the house. There Dr. Dorothy bred and trained guinea pigs for Harvard University. There were mazes and levers and colored lights and bells for all kinds of intelligence tests. She owned at least fifty pigs. They all had names. There were several white rats too, without names. They interested me on a level with the economy of Latvia.
    Snowy’s Christmas present from the Finneys was a white-and-brown guinea pig he called Rosie. At the Finneys’ house Snowy had gone nowhere without Rosie. She sat in her grapefruit carton at the dinner table while we ate, chewing her lettuce. She slept in her box by Snowy’s bed and next to the tub when he took a shower. She curled contentedly in his lap, gently nibbling his caressing fingers wherever else he was.
    “So did you have a nice Christmas, Pennimen?” asked Finney, helping himself to a macaroon and settling back in his chair by the fire.
    “Yes. My dad and I had Christmas dinner at a big hotel in Denver. We had goose. I’d never eaten it before.”
    “Your father called here, you know. Just to make sure everything was on the up and up.” Finney worried one of his molars with a metal toothpick. “He wants you to leave Winchester. He thinks Mr. Silks has treated you unfairly, and he thinks Rudy and the boys will hurt you one day.”
    “I know he thinks that. It’s all we talked about, Christmas. I told him I want to stay.”
    “I agree with your father. I also think Silks may find a way to keep you out of Hotchkiss even if you do nothing wrong from here on. From what I hear, Mr. Silks seems to think you are a ringleader and a troublemaker. Why do you want to stay here, Pennimen?”
    “I just do.”
    “A better answer, please.”
    “The school Dad wants to send me to is Monterey Academy in California. It’s not ... like Winchester.”
    “I know of the school. It has a certain reputation.”
    I waited to see what kind of reputation, but Finney seemed to take my answer for what it was and did not blast Monterey out of the water. He clucked for his collie.
    Like a shadow unfolding, the dog crept out from under her table and, slicing me with her eyes, put her muzzle on his good knee. “I’ve had boys do bad things, Pennimen,” Finney said, staring at the fire and petting the dog. “In the old days here at Winchester new boys were made to drink ink by the seniors. Then they had to piss blue in front of everyone. Boys have run cheating rings before, they have stolen the way you did, and sneaked in liquor and played pranks just the way you did. Most of those boys grew up to be decent men. But no boy I’ve ever had in thirty years would have attacked my dog like young Mr. Sader and his friends.” Finney shook his head. “They’ll try to get you, Pennimen. You should listen to your dad. Go to Monterey. Go away from here. You’ll make your way back into a good school the following year.”
    I traced the pattern of the Persian carpet with a poker and tried to think of something to say. The fire hissed and popped. The collie purred, much like a cat. In Finney’s intelligent eyes the orange reflection of the flames danced. “It’s the cave, isn’t it, Pennimen?” Finney asked.
    I nodded.
    “Tell me what you’ve found.”
    “I can’t. I promised Snowy. If I say anything, he’ll never take me back there.”
    “You