The Willoughbys
by Lois Lowry
1.
THE OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY AND THE BEASTLY BABY
Once upon a time there was a family named
Willoughby: an old-fashioned type of family, with
four children.
The eldest was a boy named Timothy; he was
twelve. Barnaby and Barnaby were ten-year-old
twins. No one could tell them apart, and it was even
more confusing because they had the same name; so
they were known as Barnaby A and Barnaby B. Most
people, including their parents, shortened this to A
and B, and many were unaware that the twins even
had names.
There was also a girl, a timid, pretty little thing
with eyeglasses and bangs. She was the youngest, just
six and a half, and her name was Jane.
They lived in a tall, thin house in an ordinary city
and they did the kinds of things that children in oldfashioned
stories do.They went to school and to the
seashore. They had birthday parties. Occasionally
they were taken to the circus or the zoo, although
they did not care much for either, excepting the elephants.
Their father, an impatient and irascible man, went
to work at a bank each day, carrying a briefcase
and an umbrella even if it was not raining. Their
mother, who was indolent and ill-tempered, did not go
to work. Wearing a pearl necklace, she grudgingly
prepared the meals. Once she read a book but
found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.
Occasionally she glanced at a magazine.
The Willoughby parents frequently forgot that they
had children and became quite irritable when they
were reminded of it.
Tim, the eldest, had a heart of gold, as many old fashioned
boys do, but he hid it behind a somewhat
bossy exterior. It was Tim who decided what the
children would do: what games they would play
("Well have a game of chess now," he occasionally
said, "and the rules are that only boys can play, and
the girl will serve cookies each time a pawn is captured");
how they would behave in church ("Kneel
nicely and keep a pleasant look on your face, but
think only about elephants," he told them once);
whether or not they would eat what their mother
had cooked ("We do not like this," he might
announce, and they would all put down their forks
and refuse to open their mouths, even if they were
very, very hungry).
Once upon a time there was a family named Willoughby: an
old-fashioned type of family, with four children.
The eldest was a boy named Timothy; he was twelve. Barnaby and Barnaby were
ten-year-old twins. No one could tell them apart, and it was even more confusing
because they had the same name; so they were known as Barnaby A and Barnaby B.
Most people, including their parents, shortened this to A and B, and many were
unaware that the twins even had names.
There was also a girl, a timid, pretty little thing with eyeglasses and bangs.
She was the youngest, just six and a half, and her name was Jane.
They lived in a tall, thin house in an ordinary city and they did the kinds of
things that children in old fashioned stories do. They went to school and to the
seashore. They had birthday parties. Occasionally they were taken to the circus
or the zoo, although they did not care much for either, excepting the elephants.
Their father, an impatient and irascible man, went to work at a bank each day,
carrying a briefcase and an umbrella even if it was not raining. Their mother,
who was indolent and ill-tempered, did not go to work. Wearing a pearl necklace,
she grudgingly prepared the meals. Once she read a book but found it distasteful
because it contained adjectives. Occasionally she glanced at a magazine.
The Willoughby parents frequently forgot that they had children and became quite
irritable when they were reminded of it.
Tim, the eldest, had a heart of gold, as many old fashioned boys do, but he hid
it behind a somewhat bossy exterior. It was Tim who decided what the children
would do: what games they would play ("We'll have a game of chess now," he
occasionally said, "and the rules are that only boys can play, and the girl will
serve cookies each time a pawn is captured"); how they would behave in church
("Kneel nicely and keep a pleasant look on your face, but think only about
elephants," he told them once); whether or not they would eat what their mother
had cooked ("We do not like this," he might announce, and they would all put
down their forks and refuse to open their mouths, even if they were very, very
hungry).
Once, his sister whispered to him privately, after a
dinner they had refused to eat, "I liked it."
But Tim glared at her and replied, "It was stuffed
cabbage. You are not allowed to like stuffed cabbage."
"All right," Jane said with a sigh. She went to bed
hungry and dreamed, as she often did, about becoming
older and more self-assured so that someday she
could play whatever game she liked or eat any food
she chose.
Their lives proceeded in exactly the way lives proceeded
in old-fashioned stories.
One day they even found a baby on their doorstep.
This happens quite often in old-fashioned stories.
The Bobbsey Twins, for example, found a baby on
their doorstep once. But it had never happened to
the Willoughbys before. The baby was in a wicker
basket and wearing a pink sweater that had a note
attached to it with a safety pin.
"I wonder why Father didn't notice it when he left
for work," Barnaby A said, looking down at the basket,
which was blocking the front steps to their house
when the four children set out one morning to take
a walk in the nearby park.
"Father is obliviousyou know that," Tim pointed
out. "He steps over any obstructions. I expect he
poked it aside." They all looked down at the basket
and at the baby, which was sound asleep.
They pictured their father taking a high step over
it after moving it slightly out of his way with his
furled black umbrella.
"We could set it out for the trash collector,"
Barnaby B suggested. "If you take one handle, A, and
I take the other, I believe we could get it down the
stairs without much trouble. Are babies heavy?"
"Please, could we read the note?" asked Jane, trying
to use the self-assured voice that she practiced in
secret.
The note was folded over so that the writing could
not be seen.
"I don't think it's necessary," Tim replied.
"I believe we should," Barnaby B said. "It could
possibly say something important."
"Perhaps there is a reward for finding the baby,"
Barnaby A suggested. "Or it might be a ransom
note."
"You dolt!" Tim said to him. "Ransom notes are
sent by the ones who have the baby."
"Maybe we could send one, then," said Barnaby A.
"Perhaps it says the baby's name," said Jane. Jane was
very interested in names because she had always felt
she had an inadequate one, with too few syllables. "I
would like to know its name."
The baby stirred and opened its eyes.
"I suppose the note might give instructions about
babies," Tim said, peering down at it. "It might say
where to put them if you find one."
The baby began to whimper and then very quickly
the whimper changed to a yowl.
"Or," said Barnaby B, holding his ears, "how to
keep them from screeching."
"If the note doesn't tell the name, may I name it?"
Jane asked.
"What would you name it?" Barnaby A asked with
interest.
Jane frowned. "Something with three syllables, I
think," she said. "Babies deserve three syllables."
"Brittany?" Barnaby A asked.
"Possibly," Jane replied.
"Madonna?" Barnaby B suggested.
"No," Jane said. "Taffeta, I think."
By now the baby was waving its fists, kicking its
chubby legs, and crying loudly. The Willoughbys' cat
appeared at the front door, gazed briefly down at the
basket, twitched its whiskers, and then dashed back
inside as if it was made nervous by the sound. The
baby did sound a bit like a yowling kitten; perhaps
that was why.
Tim finally reached down past the flailing little fists
and unpinned the note. He read it silently. "The
usual," he said to the others. "Pathetic. Just what I
expected."
He read it aloud to them. "'I chose this house
because it looks as if a happy, loving family lives here,
prosperous enough to feed another child. I am very
poor, alas. I have fallen on hard times and cannot care
for my dear baby. Please be good to her.'"
"Take that handle, twins," Tim said to his brothers.
He took hold of the opposite handle. "Jane, you carry
the note. We'll take the whole disgusting thing inside."
Jane took the folded note and followed behind her
brothers, who picked up the basket, carried it into
the front hall of the house, and set it there on an
Oriental rug. The noise coming from the baby was
not insignificant.
Their mother, frowning, opened the door at the
end of the long hall. She emerged from the kitchen.
"Whatever is that noise?" she asked. "I am trying to
remember the ingredients for meat loaf and I cannot
hear myself think."
"Oh, someone has left a beastly baby on our front
steps," Tim told her.
"My goodness, we don't want a baby!" their mother
said, coming forward to take a look. "I don't like
the feel of this at all."
"I'd like to keep it," Jane said in a small voice. "I
think it's cute."
"No, it's not cute," Barnaby A said, looking down
at it.
"Not cute at all," Barnaby B agreed.
"It has curls," Jane pointed out.
Their mother peered at the baby and then reached
toward the basket of beige knitting that she kept on
a hall table. She removed a small pair of gold-plated
scissors and snipped them open and closed several
times, thoughtfully. Then she leaned over the basket
and used the scissors.
"Now it doesn't have curls," she pointed out, and
put the scissors away.
Jane stared at the baby. Suddenly it stopped crying
and stared back at her with wide eyes. "Oh, dear. It
isn't cute without curls," Jane said. "I guess I don't
want it anymore."
"Take it someplace else, children," their mother
said, turning back toward the kitchen." Dispose of it.
I'm busy with a meat loaf."
The four children lugged the basket back outside.
They thought. They discussed the problem. It was
Barnaby A, actually, who came up with a plan, which
he explained to Tim, since he made all the decisions
for the group.
"Fetch the wagon," Tim commanded.
The twins got their wagon from where it was kept,
along with bicycles, under the stoop of the house.
The boys set the basket inside the wagon while their
sister watched. Then, taking turns pulling the handle
of the wagon, they transported the baby in its basket
down the block, across the street (waiting carefully
for the light), and for two more blocks and around
the corner to the west, going some distance farther
until, reaching their destination, they finally stopped
in front of a very forbidding house that was known
as the Melanoff mansion. The gentleman who lived
there was a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. But
he never came out. He stayed indoors, with the
moldy curtains drawn, counting his money and feeling
hostile. As with Scrooge from another old-fashioned
story, tragic events in his past had caused him
to lose interest in life.
The mansion was much larger than the other houses
in the neighborhood, but it was unkempt. A
wrought-iron fence around its yard was tilted and
twisted in places, and the yard itself was cluttered
with pieces of discarded furniture. Some of the windows
were broken and boarded over, and a thin cat
scratched itself and meowed on the porch.
"Wait, A," said Tim, when his brother began to
push open the front gate." I need to add to the note."
He held his hand out to Jane, who had placed the
folded paper carefully in the pocket of her ruffled
frock, and she gave it to him.
"Pencil," Tim demanded, and one of the twins
for all the children were accustomed to carrying
whatever Tim might need and demandhanded
him a pencil.
Barnaby B turned so that Tim could use his back
for a table.
"Could you tell what I wrote, B?" Tim asked his
brother when he had finished.
"No. It felt like scribbles."
"You must train yourself better," Tim pointed out.
"If my back had been the table, I would be able to
recite each word and also the punctuation. Practice
when you have a chance." Barnaby B nodded.
"You, too, A," Tim said, looking at the other twin.
"I will," Barnaby A promised.
"So will I," offered Jane.
"No. You needn't, because you are a girl. You will
never be called upon for important work," Tim told her.
Jane began to cry a little, but very quietly, so that
no one would notice. She vowed, through her quiet
little tears, that one day she would prove Tim wrong.
"Here is what I wrote," Tim told them, holding up
the note. He read it aloud. "'P.S. If there is any reward
to be had for this beastly baby, it should go to the
Willoughbys.'"
The other children nodded. They thought the P.S.
was a good idea.
"You might say must instead of should," Barnaby B
proposed.
"Good idea, B. Turn around."
Barnaby B turned and Tim used his back for a table
again, erasing one word and replacing it with the
other, which Barnaby B could feel him underline.
Then Tim read it aloud: "'If there is any reward to be
had for this beastly baby, it must go to the
Willoughbys.'"
He refolded the note and leaned down toward the
basket. Then he paused.
"Turn again, B," he commanded. After his brother
had turned to make a table of his back one more
time, Tim wrote an additional sentence. He folded
the note and pinned it to the baby's sweater.
"Get the gate, Jane," Tim said, and she pulled it
open. "Now, one, two, three: HOIST!" Together the
boys lifted the basket containing the baby from the
wagon. They carried it to the sagging, dusty porch of
the mansion and left it there.
The Willoughbys walked home.
"What did you add to the note at the end, Tim?"
Barnaby A asked.
"Another P.S."
"What did it say, Tim?" asked Barnaby B.
"It said, 'Her name is Ruth.'"
Jane pouted. "Why?" she asked.
"Because," Tim said with a sly smile, "we are the
ruthless Willoughbys."
From The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry. Copyright Lois Lowry 2008. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Walter Lorraine Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin.
How do I print part of this page, not all of it?
- Point your cursor at the start of the content you're interested in.
- Click and drag until you have highlighted the content you want. Then take your finger off the mouse button!
- The area you want to print should now be highlighted in blue.
- Click 'Print This Page' at the top or bottom of this document.
- The Print Screen should now open. Under 'Page Range' choose 'Selection'.
- Then click print.