The Willoughbys (13 page)

CONSPIRACY
is a plan to do something subversive. Three guys planning a camping trip ... nah, that's just three guys planning a camping trip. But three guys planning to take a camping trip and rob a bank along the way ... that's a conspiracy.

CONTEMPLATING
means thinking about something very calmly and seriously. Sometimes you will hear the phrase "contemplating your navel," which of course means thinking very seriously about your bellybutton, and makes no sense at all, because what dolt would do that? There is a whole order of nuns, incidentally, called contemplative nuns. They spend all their time thinking very calmly and seriously, but not about their navels. Maybe nuns don't even
have
navels. There is no way to know.

CRYPTIC
means seeming to have a hidden meaning. If your mother says, "Consider yourself grounded, mister!" it is not at all cryptic. But if she says in a certain voice, "We need to talk," she is being cryptic. And you are about to be grounded.

DESPICABLE
means deserving of contempt. I began to describe something despicable, but it was too upsetting so I stopped. You can come up with your own example.

DIABOLICAL
means extremely cruel or evil. The French word for it is
diabolique.
There is a French movie called
Diabolique
that I saw more than fifty years ago, and it is still the scariest movie I have ever seen.

EXPOSTULATION
means a sound that expresses disagreement or disapproval. "Yuck!" is an expostulation. So is "Arrrggghh."

FORTUITOUS
means a good thing happening just by chance. If you buy a winning lottery ticket, it is very fortuitous. (Also very unlikely.) A better example (but boring compared to the lottery) is if it begins to rain unexpectedly but you have
fortuitously
brought an umbrella.

GLOSSARY
means an alphabetical list of terms and their meanings, usually at the end of a book. Hey! We are right smack in the middle of a glossary right now!

GLUTINOUS
means just what it sounds like: sticky and disgusting. When my dog has to take a pill, I disguise the pill by putting it inside a glutinous wad of mozzarella cheese, and he gulps it right down.

HEINOUS
means shockingly evil or wicked. Right up there with
nefarious
and
reprehensible.

IGNOMINIOUS
means shamefully weak and ineffective. Oliver Twist saying, "Please sir, might I have some more?" would be ignominious, except that he isn't shameful, just sort of pathetic. This book has ignominious illustrations. They are shamefully weak because the person who drew them is not an artist.

INSIGNIFICANT
means very unimportant and having no power at all. One ant on the sidewalk is insignificant. A three-year-old could step on it and smoosh it, though it wouldn't be a very nice thing to do. An entire army of fire ants is very significant, and a three-year-old should definitely get out of the way.

IRASCIBLE
means having outbursts of bad temper. I myself had a very irascible third-grade teacher and it made for a miserable year.

LUGUBRIOUS
means very gloomy or mournful. Some funeral directors are lugubrious. They make a very sad face and say, "I'm so sorry for your loss," but secretly they are probably thinking about who is going to win the Super Bowl.

MALEVOLENT
means wanting to harm others or having an evil influence. Even though if you glance quickly at the word, it may look like "male violent" this word has nothing to do with males. It is actually pronounced mah-LEV-oh-lent. Some females are very malevolent.

MELANCHOLY
means sad. "Come to me, my melancholy baby; cuddle up and don't be blue" is the beginning of a romantic old song. Bad comedians used to tell a joke that went like this: "My girlfriend is very melancholy. She has a body like a melon and a face like a collie." But that has nothing to do with the meaning of the word and I'm sorry I brought it up.

METICULOUS
means extremely precise and careful. Surgeons have to be meticulous. Some people think great cooks are meticulous, but they are wrong. Great cooks read a recipe, maybe, but then they ignore the instructions and add extra garlic if they feel like it. Surgeons can't do that.

NEFARIOUS
means utterly, completely wicked. The character in
The Wizard of Oz
could have been called the Nefarious Witch of the West but authors like to use the same beginning consonant, often. Perhaps L. Frank Baum crossed out
nefarious
after
wicked
came to his mind. Thank goodness, because
Nefarious
would be a terrible name for a musical.

OBFUSCATE
means to make something unclear. Lawyers have a way of obfuscating.

OBLIVIOUS
means unaware of or paying no attention. If you press the mute button on your remote at the right time, you can be oblivious to the commercials. I know someone who turns off his hearing aid when he is with boring people and becomes oblivious. Obliviousness can be a good thing at times. Not always.

OBSEQUIOUS
means overly eager to please. The kid who is always raising his hand in class and saying, "I know! I know!" is usually pretty obsequious and it's no wonder nobody can stand him.
Smarmy
is kind of a neat word that means obsequious.

OBSTRUCTION
is something—or someone—that causes a blockage or a hindrance. Once, years ago, I had to call a plumber because there was an obstruction in my bathtub drain, and it turned out that my two-year-old had stuffed his toy snake down the pipe. Unrelated to plumbing, "obstruction of justice" is actually a crime, if you do it on purpose, and a lot of people seem to.

ODIOUS,
surprisingly, has nothing to do with smell. It just means something hateful or disgusting. Of course, something that smells bad and is also disgusting—like a drunk guy barfing on the sidewalk—would be odious and odoriferous at the same time. But an adorable baby skunk would be odoriferous without being odious, and a person making racist remarks while wearing expensive aftershave would be odious without being odoriferous.

PATHETIC
means so inadequate as to be laughable. Beethoven wrote a sonata for the piano called "Pathetique"—which means "pathetic" in French—but it is not at all inadequate. Go figure.

REGRETTABLE
means unfortunate, or causing feelings of shame or embarrassment. We have all done regrettable things in our lives. It is best to forget about them.

REPREHENSIBLE
means highly unacceptable. Really, really highly.

SURREPTITIOUS
means operating in a sneaky, stealthy way. Spies are always surreptitious. So are children who peek at their Christmas presents before Christmas.

TYCOON
means somebody who has amassed great wealth and power in business. Usually a tycoon is a man, for some reason. Maybe Oprah Winfrey is a tycooness.

UNKEMPT
means untidy and messy. My dictionary says it can also mean disorderly, but I know that a person can be arrested for being "drunk and disorderly" and I don't think someone can be arrested for being unkempt. Also, I don't think there is a word
kempt
—so what is that "un" all about? Beats me.

VILLAINOUS
means typical of an evil person. Very obnoxious. You could have guessed that, of course, since you already know the word
villain
. In old movies, villains almost always had mustaches. I don't know why.

WINSOME
means charming and innocent. The victims of villains are usually winsome and often have curls and long eyelashes.

Bibliography

(Books of the past that are heavy on piteous but appealing orphans, ill-tempered and stingy relatives, magnanimous benefactors, and transformations wrought by winsome children)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain, published 1884.

Orphan Huckleberry Finn builds a raft with his friend Jim and they sail down the Mississippi River hoping to get away from civilization. They never do. Undaunted, Huck vows to try again.

Anne of Green Gables

by Lucy Maude Montgomery, published 1908.

Eleven-year-old orphan Anne Shirley arrives at the Prince Edward Island farm of Marilla Cuthbert, who thought she was getting a boy to help with the chores and is dismayed at the arrival of the redheaded, talkative girl. Life at Green Gables is filled with ups and downs as Anne makes her way in the world and transforms everyone she meets. Like most literary orphans, she is wise, worthy, and self-possessed.

The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May

by Laura Lee Hope, published 1924.

The Bobbsey family has two sets of twins who have many adventures and sometimes solve mysteries. In this book they find an abandoned baby on their doorstep. (The baby's nurse, it turns out, had been hit on the head with a can of soup and had forgotten where she left the baby.) The Bobbsey parents are considerably more welcoming than Mrs. Willoughby.

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens, published 1843.

A miserly, misanthropic gentleman named Mr. Scrooge is haunted by his own sad past. Getting a glimpse of what the future might be like, he is able to change and become once again the kind-hearted, generous person he had once been. A boy named Tim is not an orphan but behaves like one.

Heidi

by Johanna Spyri, published 1872.

Little Heidi, orphaned as an infant, is taken at age five by her selfish aunt to live with her ill-tempered recluse of a grandfather high up in the Swiss Alps. Her friends there include the illiterate goat-herd, Peter. Later she convinces a crippled girl named Clara to get out of her wheelchair and walk.

James and the Giant Peach

by Roald Dahl, published 1961.

Orphaned by a zoo mishap when he is eight, James must live with two evil aunts, Spiker and Sponge. Some magical elements intervene, involving over-large fruit, and the wretched aunts are mashed and destroyed, while James goes on to find happiness.

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Bronte, published 1847.

The penniless orphan Jane Eyre grows up and secures a position at Thornfield Hall, acting as governess to the spoiled niece of her employer, Mr. Rochester. After many mysteries and near disasters, Jane and her employer fall in love, marry, and presumably live happily ever after.

Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott, published 1868.

Sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy live with their mother, whom they call Marmee, while their father is off in the Civil War. They have many adventures and some misfortunes. Meg is mature and sensible. Jo is literary and boyish. Amy is vain and foolish. Beth is saintly and dies.

Mary Poppins

by P. L. Travers, published 1934.

Mary Poppins is not at all like the cheerful, spritely movie person played by Julie Andrews. She is a stern, cross, vain, and mysterious nanny who arrives on the wind at the home of the Banks family in London to care for their four children, who are not orphans. Ms. Poppins does not sing, ever, and would not like being portrayed as someone who did.

Pollyanna

by Eleanor H. Porter, published 1913.

An orphaned child named Pollyanna goes east by train to live with her ill-tempered Aunt Polly. She finds ways to be glad about everything, even orphanhood, poverty, and a broken leg; and she changes everyone, including Aunt Polly, with her cheerful disposition.

Ragged Dick

by Horatio Alger Jr., published 1867.

An orphaned young boy with bad clothing struggles to escape poverty. Hard work, honesty, and a wealthy benefactor who sees his worth make things come out well for the boy.

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published 1909.

Newly orphaned Mary Lennox is sent to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven, at Misselthwaite Manor. He doesn't seem to like her much. But she makes an environmentally conscious friend named Dickon, and meets a sickly boy named Colin, whom she persuades to get out of his wheelchair and walk. Together the three children take up gardening and thrive.

Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with the Circus

by James Otis, published 1923.

An orphan named Toby runs away and joins the circus, but it is not a happy experience. His employer is a villain named Mr. Lord. The only one who loves him is a monkey. But the monkey dies.