And then it was September, and with it came cooler weather and some serious discussions about what was going to be done about Harleigh Four’s education. The thing was, it just wasn’t happening anymore with Edgar. He and Harleigh did have some lengthy sessions now and then, but they were mostly spent deciding things about the House and the money.
Harleigh could see that it would be too much to expect Edgar to go back to being his tutor and still go on investing, controlling, and arranging to spend all that money. It would be too much work even for someone a lot younger and more energetic than Edgar.
“So what are we going to do?” he asked Harleigh. “It looks like it won’t be too long before you are going to have to take over being responsible for not only all the Weatherby assets, but also the lives of quite a few direct, and not so direct, Weatherby descendants. And to handle all that you’re going to need to know your way around this complicated world.”
Harleigh more or less agreed—at least he had begun to, rather recently. He also realized that only a few weeks ago he might not have agreed at all. In thinking back over the recent past, he remembered feeling that he already knew just about everything he needed to know, along with exactly where he wanted to go with his life. But somehow, he didn’t know exactly how or why, he was now a little less sure of—of what? Of what he ought to do about a lot of the people who lived in Weatherby House, for one thing, along with what he might want to do with all the money that old Harleigh the First had squeezed out of all sorts of people and then stashed away under the stage in his grand recital hall.
At any rate, for whatever reason, and partly against his will, he found himself thinking that he still had a lot to learn. But where? That was the big question.
One thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to be sent to the Hardacre Military Academy that Aunt had been so crazy about. And it seemed that the only other choice would be to go back to the Riverbend schools; at this point probably to seventh or eighth grade at the junior high. At least that was what Edgar seemed to think. When Edgar brought up that possibility, Harleigh nodded reluctantly and sighed.
“As bad as all that? Here. Tell me about it.” Edgar patted the chair next to his. They were in the library at the time, where they had just finished going over stacks of letters and notebooks that kept track of what was being done with the money. So Harleigh sat down again and told him.
“Well, some of them, boys mostly, but a few girls, too, thought it was really funny that I was so—so short. And then someone started calling me Hardly instead of Harleigh. They’d even call me Hardly in front of the teachers, and then they’d just pretend that they had mispronounced my name by accident. And besides that—”
Edgar patted his shoulder and said he got the picture. “But things are quite different now,” he said. “For one thing, you’re bigger now. You know you really have been growing lately, don’t you?”
Harleigh nodded. He knew now that it was true. Ever since the day he’d cracked his head on the picture frame, he’d been measuring himself at least once a day, and there was no doubt about it. He really was growing, and fast. “But I’m still not as big as a lot of them are,” he said.
“True.” Edgar nodded. “But physically you’re probably already as big as some of them, and in a lot of other areas you’re definitely on your way toward being at the top of the heap. Take my word for it, Harleigh. You’re growing in more ways than one.”
But when Harleigh still didn’t seem too pleased with the idea of returning to Riverbend, Edgar had some more advice to offer. “Believe me, Harleigh,” he said. “I understand the problem. Remember, I was one of the ‘lucky’ boys who got sent off to Hardacre as a teenager. A slightly rebellious, and already more than slightly chubby, teenager.” He shrugged and curved his wide lips into a sour smile before he went on. “I spent a couple of pretty miserable months. But then I discovered a trick that helped a lot.”
“Oh, yeah?” Harleigh asked. “So what trick was that?”
“The trick was—to make all the other boys believe that I didn’t care. That I didn’t care what any of them did or said. It didn’t happen immediately, and at first I definitely was putting on an act. But after I’d worked at it for a while, I found out that it really was true. As soon as I really didn’t care what they did, they stopped doing it. Kind of spoiled the fun, I guess.”
At the time Harleigh enjoyed Edgar’s story about his “trick,” but he didn’t take it too seriously. However, when the semester started there they were again—all the same old teasers and tormentors who remembered him from fifth grade and hadn’t forgotten how much fun they’d had calling him Hardly and some other insulting names. But after a while he began to see some changes.
For one thing, a new and different problem had cropped up at Weatherby House. One that Harleigh had to help solve. Actually, he’d learned about it a couple of weeks before school started when the Farleys, two of the elderly descendants who lived in the west wing, came to talk to Harleigh and Edgar about their grandson.
It seemed this grandson, whose name was Tyler, was about to become homeless. That is, his mother, who was a single parent, was going to have to be in the hospital for a long time, and there wasn’t any place for Tyler to live. Unless it could be with his Weatherby grandparents.
“Of course,” John Farley, the elderly husband, said, “we would never have even considered asking Aunt Adelaide if Tyler could come to stay with us. We knew how strict her rules were about allowing any children on the premises.” The old man paused to glance at Harleigh and then went on, “At least children who weren’t direct descendants. But recently we’ve begun to wonder if . . .”
Edgar looked at Harleigh for a long, thoughtful moment before he said, “What do you think, Harleigh? We need a decision here, and I guess it’s up to you to make it. Any ideas?”
Afterward Harleigh wasn’t entirely sure who came up with the solution, but he knew he’d had a hand in it. The solution was that people who were going to be closest to a problem ought to be involved in deciding what to do about it.
So there was a conference in the library attended by all the west wing people, which included Matilda and Sheila and the Galworthy sisters and several others. And after John and Sally Farley finished telling their grandson’s sad story, Sheila and both of the Galworthys were sobbing and even Matilda seemed about to, and the verdict was that they’d all be happy to have Tyler as a neighbor.
Tyler arrived two weeks after the school year had already started at Riverbend Junior High, and it turned out that he, too, was in the eighth grade. But when Harleigh met his new classmate and fellow Weatherby House resident, his immediate reaction was a stunned, Great! Just what I need.
That meeting happened in Weatherby House’s grand entry hall, and having seen lots of other people’s reaction to its size and splendor, Harleigh wasn’t surprised by Tyler’s open-mouthed amazement. However, in Tyler’s case that open mouth did make his extremely buck teeth a little more noticeable. Those teeth, along with the fact that he was incredibly skinny and had hair that looked like it had been combed by an eggbeater, made for a really bad first impression. Harleigh’s first impression was that having to take Tyler with him to Riverbend Junior High wasn’t going to make his own life any easier.
And it certainly didn’t, except briefly, while most of the really dedicated torturers were too busy going after poor old toothy Tyler to torment Harleigh as much as usual. But that didn’t last very long, because for some strange reason Tyler didn’t seem to mind. When Frankie Nelson and his gang of really smart-mouthed guys went after Tyler, he just grinned as if he thought it was all in good fun and went right on with whatever he was doing. His reaction didn’t make any sense to Harleigh until it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he was doing what Edgar said he’d done—pretending he didn’t care. But when he asked Tyler about it he said no, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t pretending.
“I guess I’m just used to it,” he said. “It was a lot worse where I was before I came here. It’s great living in Weatherby House with my grandparents, and . . .” He grinned at Harleigh. “And having somebody to go to school with is . . .” He shrugged, and his grin was even toothier than usual. “That part is really—okay.”
And Harleigh managed to hold his tongue, but what he was thinking was a sarcastic, Well, I’m glad somebody’s happy.