Freddy the Politician

Freddy the Politician

Walter R. Brooks

Illustrated by Kurt Wiese

The Overlook Press

New York

I

Jinx, the cat, was asleep on an old sofa cushion behind the stove in the kitchen. Jinx was very fond of the sofa cushion. Mrs. Bean, the farmer's wife, had made it for him out of a red satin dress she had had when she was a girl, and she had embroidered his name on it in blue worsted and there was a border of blue forget-me-nots around the edge. Robert, the collie, and Georgie, the little brown dog, slept on the other side of the stove, but had only pieces of carpet. And the four mice—Eek and Quik and Eeny and Cousin Augustus—who sometimes came into the kitchen to sleep in cold weather, had just an old cigar box of Mr. Bean's with some rags in it.

It was a raw blustery March night and the wind kept going round and round the house, trying the doors and rattling the windows to make sure that everything was locked up tight. It would rush away across the fields and everything would be quiet for a while, then pretty soon it would come rushing back as if it had forgotten something, and would rattle the doors and windows all over again.

After a while it found a loose shutter on the front parlor window and began banging it. It banged it and shook it and rattled it and tried to pull it off the hinges. And that seemed to excite the wind. It began to play with the house as a cat does with a ball. It would go way off and be very quiet for a while, creeping up slowly on the house, and then suddenly it would leap on it and shake it. Or it would go high up in the starlit sky and drop on the house with a bang. It roared down the chimney and blew under the doors so that the carpets rippled along the floor, and it slapped the windows and whistled through the keyholes. And at last Jinx woke up and said: “My goodness, can't we have a little peace and quiet around here?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Robert. “I kind of like to lie here all snug and warm and listen to the wind.”

“There's always too much noise around here,” said Jinx. “If it isn't one thing it's another. There, just listen to that.”

There had come a lull in the wind and in it they could hear a faint little regular moan. It was Cousin Augustus snoring.

“Well, surely you don't mind that tonight, Jinx, with all this racket going on,” said Georgie.

“Those darn mice!” said Jinx. “They can sleep through anything.” He got up and stretched, and then reached out a paw and shut the cover of the cigar box with a smack.

At once there was a great squeaking and rustling in the box and then the mice came tumbling out. “Hey, Jinx! Robert!” they squeaked. “Who did that? Help! What's the matter?”

Jinx just sat and laughed at them, but Robert said: “Go on back to bed, boys. That was just Jinx's idea of a joke.” And then he stopped and listened for a second and said: “Psst! Here comes Mr. Bean.”

The wind was rattlety-bang-banging away against the shutter and they couldn't hear Mr. Bean, but the back stairs began to get light as if somebody was coming with a candle. First they saw a large blue and yellow carpet slipper on the top step. And then another slipper jumped past it onto the step below. The slippers kept coming down like this and pretty soon they saw a long white nightshirt, and then a face which was mostly all whiskers with a nose sticking out of them and two sharp eyes looking over them, and then a white nightcap with a red tassel. And last of all they saw an arm that ended in a hand holding a lighted candle. And Mr. Bean was in the kitchen.

He went through the kitchen into the front parlor and they heard him put up the window and fasten the loose blind. Then he came back. The dogs thumped their tails on the floor, and Jinx got up and rubbed his left ear on Mr. Bean's leg. Mr. Bean looked at them.

“I suppose you animals would let that blind bang itself to pieces before you'd get up and fasten it,” he said. “I go round tellin' all and sundry that my animals are the smartest animals in New York State, but I dunno. Seems to me if you was so all-fired smart you'd fix a little thing like that yourselves without waiting for me to do it. My gracious, if I can't count on you to see to a little thing like that, how could I go off to Europe all summer like Mrs. Bean wants me to, and leave you in charge of the farm? No, no; 'tain't to be thought of.” And he stumped off upstairs again.

“Oh, dear,” said Georgie, “I knew something like this would happen. Mrs. Bean has worked so hard to get him to promise to take her and the boys to Europe.”

“I wish we
had
thought to fasten the old blind,” said Jinx. “But, after all, it's a pretty small thing to put off the trip to Europe for.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Robert. “I don't believe any other farmer would ever go away and leave his farm in charge of a lot of animals for six months. It isn't that we can't look after things and keep the farm going all right. But animals aren't used to taking any responsibility. When we see something that ought to be done we usually wait for Mr. Bean to do something about it. Just like that blind.”

“Well,” said Jinx, “we
can
look after the farm all right. But will we? You know how it is when we're all responsible for seeing to something. Each one of us thinks: ‘Oh, well, somebody else will look after that.' And then it never gets done. No, we've got to select one animal who will be responsible for everything.”

“But there isn't any one animal who could do all the work on the farm,” said Georgie.

“I don't mean he'd
do
all the work. But he'd see that it got done—tell all the others what to do. Well, like the President of the United States. He'd be the big boss.”

“He'd be President of the Bean Farm,” said Georgie. “Say, Jinx, why couldn't we elect a president? Have a regular election and everything?”

“Golly, that's a good idea!” said Jinx enthusiastically. “An election with torchlight processions and campaign speeches and everything! That would fix running the farm, all right. And we'd have a lot of fun too. We'll get hold of Freddy first thing in the morning and call a meeting and talk it over.”

“There are a lot of things about running a farm that we don't know, though,” said Robert. “There's money. What do any of us know about money?”

“I found a quarter once,” said Georgie.

“What did you do with it?” asked Robert.

“I don't remember.”

“There you are,” said Jinx. “He doesn't remember. And yet you know what Mr. Bean said yesterday to Mrs. Bean about Adoniram? ‘That boy,' he said, ‘has got to learn to take care of money, or he'll never make a farmer.' Well, we won't be good farmers either if we don't learn.”

“How do you take care of money?” Quik asked.

“Put it in the bank, silly,” said Jinx.

“What for?” said Quik.

“Oh, how should I know?” said the cat crossly. “Anyway, what do you care, mouse? You haven't got any money.”

“Is that so?” said Quik. “You'd be surprised how many pieces of money mice find back of baseboards and under floors and places.”

“I suppose that's so,” said Robert. “I wish there was some way we could show Mr. Bean we knew how to take care of money. That would make him feel better than anything about going away and leaving us to look after the farm.”

“Perhaps we could start a bank,” said Georgie.

“That's an idea,” said the cat. “Gosh, you're full of ideas tonight, Georgie. If we were bankers, Mr. Bean wouldn't worry, I bet. I've often heard him say that the bankers were the backbone of the country.”

“Yes, but how do you start a bank?” asked Eeny.

“Pooh! Nothing to it!” said the cat. “You just—well, you just open it. Big sign over the door—‘BANK.' That's all.”

“Oh,” said Eeny. “So you call it a bank and then it's a bank, hey?”

“Sure.”

“Oh,” said Eeny again. “So then if I call you a big blowhard, what does that make you?”

“What!” yelled Jinx. “Why, you—” He made a dive for the cigar box, but the mice had sneaked away in the darkness, and in a pause in the wind he heard them giggling together under the floor. For a minute he didn't say anything. He couldn't see the two dogs. Cats can see better than other animals in the dark but they can't see when there isn't any light at all, and the kitchen was as dark as a bottom bureau drawer. He listened suspiciously, but the wind made so much noise again that he couldn't tell whether the dogs were laughing or not. After a minute he said: “Darned mice! I don't know why I put up with them.”

“Well,” said Robert, “if you will try to pretend that you know about things when you don't, you must expect to be made fun of. The bank's a good idea, though. We might find out from Mr. Webb how to run it.”