Freddy the Pied Piper (10 page)

“I thought everybody had
some
friends,” Freddy said.

“Not her. Listen, Freddy; one day there was a woman came, and when she saw Mrs. Guffin she held out her arms and said: ‘Why, Gwetholinda Guffin! Well, well, you look just the same after all these years!' But Mrs. Guffin just folded her arms and said: ‘Who are you?' ‘Why, don't you remember your old schoolmate, Mary What'sis?' says the woman. ‘Well,' says Mrs. Guffin, ‘what of it?' ‘Well, dear me,' says the woman, ‘I thought you'd be glad to see me, because I just got back to Tallmanville after being in Chicago so long, and we were such good friends.' ‘Well, you could have stayed in Chicago for all of me,' says Mrs. Guffin, and the woman just stared at her a minute, and Mrs. Guffin says: ‘Well, what do you want? I've got to get back to my housework.' So the woman just turned around and went.”

Freddy said: “Tut, tut!” At least he made the clicking sound with his tongue that is always written “Tut, tut,” in books because you can't really spell it. If he had said: “Dear me, how dreadful!” it would have meant the same thing, and I wouldn't have had to explain so much. Anyway, that's what he did, and he said: “That's certainly no way to keep friends.”

“Maybe Mrs. G. was mad because her friend told her she looked the same after all these years,” said Jinx. “Golly, don't you suppose she's changed at all? She must have been a pretty tough looking little girl.”

But later in the day they came across a photograph album, and in it Jinx found a picture of Mrs. Guffin, aged nine. She looked just the same, only smaller. They all looked at it and said, “Tut, tut, tut!” And then they shut the album and put it away. It wasn't anything you could really figure out.

Freddy spent that night in his hotel room again, but didn't go back to the pet shop in the morning. He didn't think Mrs. Church would get there before afternoon, but he didn't dare take the chance of missing her, so he sat in the window and watched the street. And about two o'clock Mrs. Church's big car drew up before the door. Freddy ran down, and when he had explained all that had happened, they drove around to the pet shop.

On the way home, Leo sat in the back seat between Mrs. Church and Jinx, and Freddy sat in front beside Riley. The thirteen stray cats were tucked in wherever there was room. Some of the dyed chickadees, whom Freddy had released from their cages before leaving the shop, flew along beside them for a mile or two, diving and turning somersaults in the air, and putting on an acrobatic show for them. In the back seat, as the car whirred along up the snowy road, Mrs. Church listened with interest to the story of Leo's adventures. Freddy tried to talk to Riley, but the chauffeur was unaccountably grumpy; he answered with nods and grunts, and refused to be drawn into conversation until Freddy asked him right out what was the matter.

Some of the chickadees flew along putting on an acrobatic show for them.

Riley screwed his face up into an expression of deep gloom.“Look,” he said; “I'm hired to do what Mrs. Church wants me to do. I ain't kicking; we get along fine. If she says: ‘Drive to the moon'—O K, we drive to the moon. But there's some things she hadn't ought to ask.”

“You mean like driving Leo and Jinx and me?” Freddy asked. “You mean you don't like having animals in the car?”

“No, no; you know I don't mean that,” Riley said. “It's these cats.”

“You mean there are too many of them in the car?”

“There's either too many or too few, according to how you look at it. There's thirteen, ain't there? Well, that's bad luck.”

“Oh,” said Freddy, “I see. You mean you're superstitious about it. Well, but look here; there's fourteen, if you count Jinx.”

“Yeah. Just the same there's thirteen, if you don't count Jinx.”

“That doesn't—excuse me, Riley, but that doesn't make sense to me. My goodness, you can't help being superstitious about the number thirteen, but you don't have to count everything in thirteens, do you? I mean, if you go buy a dozen cookies, and carry them home in a paper bag, do you figure that's thirteen things you're carrying—twelve cookies and one bag?”

“Gosh, I never thought of that,” said Riley. “Well, I suppose I could eat one of the cookies.”

“You'd be carrying it just the same—inside you,” said Freddy. “You can't beat it that way.”

Freddy knew that you can't stop people being superstitious by telling them how foolish they are. They know they're foolish all right. They say so themselves. “I know it's foolish,” they say, “but I think it's bad luck to spill the salt.” Freddy knew this because he was superstitious about some things himself—only not about the number thirteen. But he tried to argue with Riley.

Everybody in the car got into the argument finally, and it went on a long time. Each one apparently had a pet superstition which he took seriously, while making fun of everybody else's. One of the cats told about a man he used to live with who thought it was such bad luck if he got his shirt, or even one of his socks on wrong side out when he was dressing, that he would put his pajamas on and go back to bed again in order to get up again and start the day right.

“The trouble with believing that certain things bring bad luck,” Mrs. Church said, “is, not that they really do bring it, but that you believe they do. In believing it, you sort of prepare the way for bad luck. It's like riding a bicycle—if you expect to fall off, pretty soon you do. But if you just go ahead and ride, without thinking much about it, you don't have any trouble.”

“Yeah?” said Riley. “How about the other day when you made me park in front of the Methodist Church?”

“That proves what I just said,” Mrs. Church replied. “Riley's superstitious about parking in front of a church,” she said, “and in town the other day the only empty space was in front of the church. He wanted to go on and come back later, but I said no, he'd have to park there. Well, he got so nervous worrying about bad luck while he was trying to get the car in close to the curb, that he stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake and ran into the car in front, and smashed a fender and it cost me thirty dollars.”

“What I don't understand,” Freddy said, “is why we're always superstitious about things that bring
bad
luck. Why can't we be superstitious about
good
luck? I mean, instead of thinking it's bad luck when you spill the salt, why not think it's good luck when you spill the pepper?”

“Because it wouldn't be,” said Riley. “People would go around knocking over the pepper as often as they could, and everybody'd sneeze all the time. That ain't good luck.”

“I see what you mean, Freddy,” said Mrs. Church. “We ought to look for good signs instead of bad ones. You ought not to go around being scared all the time; you ought to be hopeful. But I can't think of a single thing that's supposed to be good luck.—Oh yes, I remember one: if you drop a fork, it means company is coming.”

“That ain't necessarily good luck,” said Riley. “It depends on the company.”

They all tried to think of things that were signs of good luck coming, but none of them could. “Just the same, there must be some,” said Mrs. Church. “If, as they say, coming events cast their shadows before them, good things ought to cast just as long shadows as bad things.”

I don't know why none of them thought of four-leaved clovers.

It was after dark when they reached the Bean farm, and Mrs. Church only stopped a few minutes to say hello to Mrs. Bean, and to Mrs. Wiggins, who was a great friend of hers. Then Freddy and Jinx thanked her and she shook hands all around with everybody including the thirteen cats, and drove off.

The next morning Freddy got Mr. Bean's permission and he hitched up Hank to the cutter and he and Leo drove into town. He dropped Leo at the beauty parlor and went on to the newspaper office, where he wrote out the following advertisement.

HAVE YOU GOT MOUSE TROUBLE?

Are mice disturbing your sleep, destroying

your property, and scaring your wife

and children into fits?

C
ALL
F
REDDY, THE
P
OPULAR
D
E
-M
OUSER

Let our staff of trained operatives mouse

proof your home. Charges reasonable.

All work guaranteed.

F
REDDY;
at the Sign of the Fleeing Grey Mouse, Bean Farm, R.F.D. #2, Centerboro.

He had this put in the paper and then he drove over to the bank, where he found Mr. Weezer not too pleased with the results of the suggestions he and Jinx had made. The trouble was that news of the free cheese offer had got around town, and on Thursday—which was the day the cheese was given out—the bank mice had had so many guests from outside that Mr. Barclay had had to go out three times for more cheese, and even then it wasn't enough. “This bank is the strongest bank in the county,” Mr. Weezer said; “it has enormous resources, it has weathered eight depressions. But it cannot afford to buy cheese for all the mice in town. And even if it could, it causes too much disturbance. You could hear them scampering around and squeaking even up here—you wouldn't believe that mice could put on such a noisy party. And once a lot of them came right upstairs from the vaults and played tag all over the place. They chased Miss Gillespie right up on top of her desk, and of course she screamed. I don't suppose you can blame her, but it doesn't look well to have an assistant lady cashier hopping around on the desks and squealing during banking hours. The people outside the cage couldn't see the mice, of course. They just thought—well, goodness knows what they thought. Several of them closed out their accounts at once.”

Freddy said he was very sorry. “But I have a better scheme now,” he said. And he told Mr. Weezer about it. “I'll bring the cats in and chase every mouse out of the bank.”

“Chasing them out is one thing, but keeping them from coming back is another,” Mr. Weezer said.

“I'll leave one cat on guard to see that they don't come back,” said Freddy.

Mr. Weezer thought that might work. “But what are you going to charge me?”

“Nothing,” said Freddy. “We've caused you a lot of trouble, and the least we can do is straighten it out. But what do you think we ought to charge other people? Do you think a dollar a house would be too much?”

“Not nearly enough,” said Mr. Weezer. “Five dollars a house, Freddy. For one thing, it's worth it; and for another, you'll get more people at five dollars than you would at one. I don't know why that is, but it's so. The less you charge for your services, the less people seem to want them. And there's another thing: half of the houses in this town are overrun with mice. If you go about it right, you can make enough to get that circus you were talking about back on the road again.”

From the bank Freddy went over to the beauty parlor, but Leo wasn't ready to go home. He was still sitting under the dryer with his eyes shut, and one of the young ladies was putting red nail polish on his claws. She looked up when Freddy came in. “I don't like this job much,” she said. “If this lion wasn't a friend of yours—”

“Why there's nothing to worry about,” said Freddy. “Leo wouldn't hurt anybody.”

“Maybe not,” said the girl. “But why does he growl all the time then?”

Freddy listened. Above the hum of the dryer he could hear a regular harsh snarling noise. It sounded like a heavy truck trying to get out of a snowbank. He laughed. “He's purring,” he said.

Leo opened one eye. The dryer made so much noise that he couldn't hear what they were saying, but he smiled at Freddy. “Hi, pig!” he said. “Wait till you see how I'm having my mane done. Miss, will you show him the picture? Like to see what you think of it.”

The girl brought a book containing pictures of various kinds of hair-dos, and turned to one which showed the hair pulled up tight from the back into a sort of plume on top. Of course it was not a picture of a lion but of a pretty girl, and it was hard for Freddy to imagine what it would look like on Leo.

“It's that fashionable up-sweep,” said Leo. “The latest thing. I think it will be becoming, don't you?”

The girl said to Freddy: “I wanted him to have something more conservative. This would look all right on a movie star, but—”

“He thinks he looks like a movie star,” Freddy said.

“They all do,” said the girl.

“What's that?” Leo asked, trying to hear.

“We think it's very smart,” Freddy shouted. “Very becoming.”

Leo gave a satisfied nod and closed his eyes again. And Freddy went over and sat in a chair and composed a poem.