The Secret of the Sealed Room by Bailey MacDonald

Author:Bailey MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Published: 2010-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

Eight

Though a brother, he considered himself as my master,

and me as his apprentice…

—The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Before Ben and I could snatch a moment to speak to each other, James Franklin turned from the press and confronted his brother angrily. “You have had time to do your errand five times over! Thank you so much for deciding to favor us with your presence once again, Master Franklin. Here, now, take this and be quicker about it!” Mr. James reached to a counter and then handed Ben a twice-folded paper.

“Couldn’t I just—,” Ben began.

James cut him short: “You can just do your job; that’s what you can just do! Listen now, and remember what I want. We have to have more paper and ink. Take this order to Crawford’s—you know the place—and wait until Mr. Crawford himself gives you an answer.”

“Yes, but—”

James punched him on the arm, not really hard, but in annoyance, not in play. “Close your mouth and open your ears for a change! Tell him we need all this by next Monday, when we print the next issue. I must know if he can supply us with all we need by then, and if he cannot, I must make other arrangements today. If he is out of his office, wait there until he comes in. Remember, I must have an answer from him, not from anyone else, because last time his fool of a chief clerk forgot all about our paper until it was nearly too late to do us any good. Don’t stand there gawping! Off with you!” Ben had been giving me an anguished look, but James roughly shoved him along toward the door. He even aimed a kick at Ben as Ben turned, but he missed. The young idlers laughed at that.

As I watched Ben run off on his errand, I was on fire to know what the trouble was, but I had no way of learning it. To make matters worse Mr. James settled into a chair and in a loud, angry voice began to mock his younger brother to his friends: “He is such a tiresome lad. Always daydreaming and getting into trouble! I wonder my father hasn’t tied him in a sack, like an unwanted puppy, and thrown him in the Mill Pond to drown before this!”

I had to bite my tongue to keep from protesting Mr. James’s harsh manner and angry words, and I began to feel sorry for Ben—he and I were not so different.

“Drowning him would never work,” one of his friends said, laughing. “Your little brother swims like a fish!”

Another one said, “That’s true. I remember well seeing him splashing in the pond one summer day a year or so ago. He was lying flat on his back in the water—I know not how he kept from sinking—and holding tight on to the string of a kite, which towed him from one bank to the other, like a ship with a flying sail!”

“Aye,” said James in a surly tone.

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