“Seventeen and three-quarter miles.”
Teddy nodded. “I believe you have made a great discovery, Roy. Of course, some one else may have thought of it ahead of you. I seem to remember a man by the name of Einstein who made a crack about relativity—”
“That had to do with motion,” Roy answered seriously. “You see, he said that all motion is relative. For instance, suppose two trains are moving at the same rate of speed and you’re sitting in one of them. If there were no stationary objects near, it would be impossible to tell—”
“Oh, the sun shines bright in my old Kentucky ho-o-ome!” Teddy sang loudly. “’Tis summer, the darkies are gay. And the little tots play in the cabin round the do-o-o-ore! For my old Kentucky ho-o-o-o-o-ome—”
Roy leaned toward him casually, stretched out his arm and caught Teddy just under the fifth rib with his open hand. The “h-o-o-o-o-ome” was ripped apart, the pieces being expelled by a vigorous “ooof!”
“And no insurance,” Teddy grunted regretfully. “The home that had sheltered those people all these years, to be broken up by a careless blow of a calloused hand! My! My! Here, Flash, cut that out! Roy, hang on to Star for a second.”
He looked at his brother. Roy’s face was white and his eyes had little crinkles of pain at the corners.
“What the mischief?” Teddy demanded. “Your head, Roy? That was a pretty mean sock you got. Here, you tie this handkerchief around it—or let me. Go on, now, mind, little brother.”
“Guess I shouldn’t have been so funny, whacking you that way,” Roy muttered, and smiled weakly. “I don’t want that thing on my head, Teddy. If Nell sees me coming all tied up she’ll think something happened.”
“And nothing did happen—we’ve just been to a tea, and you got a little damp trying to do a six beat crawl in the punch bowl,” Teddy said sarcastically. “Listen to me, bucko! They’ll know you took a spill. How can they help knowing? But what of it? Tell ’em you got out all right—crawled ashore. Remember that? You crawled ashore.”