The Linnet's Tale (A Mouse Story for Grownups) (The Tottensea Series)

by Dale C. Willard

  Mrs. Fieldpea, you see, knew that her husband was not inclined to think about several things at once as she was like to do. Mr. Fieldpea thought about one thing at a time. But he thought VERY DEEPLY. And she considered that he did it exceedingly well. In fact, Mrs. Fieldpea thought this inclination to deep thinking somewhat superior to her own. I, personally, am not at all sure that it was superior. But she thought it so and I count that rather splendid—for her to think that, I mean—the more so since he had always admired her for her ability to move effortlessly from one necessary line of thought to another.

  In any event, Mrs. Fieldpea knew that for Mr. Fieldpea to leave off thinking about what he was reading in his newspaper in order to attend to what she was asking him to think about at that moment required a certain deliberate adjustment of his interior processes. And she felt…well, rather honored that he undertook such an effort for her, if you see what I mean. But it did require a small space of time, that adjustment.

  One evening, after such an adjustment, Mr. Fieldpea said, "I've been thinking about Grenadine and the others, as a matter of fact. Today, actually."

  "Really?" said Mrs. Fieldpea, interested.

  "Yes," he continued. "It occurred to me that siblings are very useful to one another. It's as if one were to rattle small stones about in a box until they were all of them quite smooth. Do you think that reasonable?"

  "Yes, I believe I do," she said.

  He went on. "It's quite wonderful in its effect—this rattling about—but it does, at times, set up something of a small racket, you see."

  "Hmm. Yes. Of course, it would," she said, frowning thoughtfully. "We simply will have a bit of noise then."

  "A bit, yes. But only within reasonable limits," he emphasized, picking up his newspaper. Then he put it back down and added this thought: "So we mustn't give up hope, I think."

  "No. Certainly not," said Mrs. Fieldpea, just putting the last crimson stitch in the tip of the radish near the very bottom edge of the lovely amber ground.

  And generally they don't. Give up hope, I mean. Field mice.

  Neither do they, as parents, moreover, leave all the smoothing to the other small stones. When one day, Mr. Fieldpea said:

  "Grenadine, enough of this rhyming business for now!" and his daughter answered with:

  "Do you mean a rough amiss timing is this somehow?" (which, if one works it out, was quite remarkable but very disobedient)—it cost her some desserts.

  Being rhymed at by a small tenacious field mouse will not, of course, cause anyone actual physical harm. Disobedience, however, will cause all manner of harm to that small tenacious field mouse, herself—and Mr. and Mrs. Fieldpea knew it. All considerations of Grenadine's talent or future had to be put aside until this issue of minding one's parents could be settled. It took a bit of their own tenacity for her mother and father to settle it, but at length it was settled. And due to such settling, Grenadine grew up a happier mouse—easier to live with and much better liked by her sisters. In fact, as they came of age, the Fieldpea girls were known in Tottensea Burrows not only for being beautiful and accomplished, but also for being practically inseparable.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tea at The Bookish Mouse

  Close by the Fieldpea front door you would find, off to your right, the entrance to The Bookish Mouse—Tottensea Burrows' finest mousebook shop. It was a restful and inviting place, with a few overstuffed chairs, well broken in and scattered about in pairs, so that one might sit and discuss with a friend the merits of a work or the advisability of its purchase. There were bookshelves right up the walls of The Bookish Mouse and, in the middle, islands of shelves, though not so tall as all that, certainly taller than the average mouse. It was, on the whole, an agreeably clean shop though not every volume and every shelf was always and completely above having a bit of dust along the tops of them, you understand. It had a varnished wooden floor which was worn white in certain places from being walked on and which squeaked pleasantly as you moved about among the books that interested you.

  Mr. Glendowner Fieldpea was the proprietor of The Bookish Mouse and he normally sat on a tall stool at the little carved cherry wood counter by the door where customers would come to pay for their purchases or to ask questions. It was, not uncommonly, a quiet shop in the early hours of business and, in fact, the squeaking of the floor, the riffling of pages and the necessary clearing of a mouse's throat, from time to time, might be all there was to be heard in the place for half a morning. Owing to the general quietness at such times and to the occasional want of fresh air in The Bookish Mouse, its proprietor was once or twice discovered to be precariously asleep atop his tall three-legged stool. But only once or twice, as I say, and in all fairness, things being as they were, it could have happened to almost anyone.

  But if slow in the mornings, business at The Bookish Mouse was predictably brisk at tea time. For it was then that Mrs. Emmalina Fieldpea would spread a crisp white cloth on the little round table next to Contemporary Rodent Fiction and offer to their customers her traditional refreshment of acorn butter and blackthorn jam on oat-seed cakes along with a cup of piping hot black India tea. Indeed, so celebrated were these delicious comestibles that at about four o'clock in the afternoon various of the Tottensea mice might be asking themselves if perhaps they really shouldn't go and have a look at that book they had been thinking of buying, fully realizing at that particular time of day that, after all, a mouse mustn't always be putting off a thing that needed doing.

  Having tea at The Bookish Mouse was one of the finest things to be done in all Tottensea Burrows and you may be sure that no mice doing it were ever heard to say anything tiresome about the dangers of mixing business with pleasure. Pleasure was exactly what they wanted mixed into the business of buying of their books. Clementine Nickelpenny, for example, came to tea one afternoon seeking romance. And who would deny her a bit of pleasure in business like that? Certainly not the mice. And when, over her cake, Mrs. Nickelpenny told Mrs. Fieldpea of her mission, Mrs. Fieldpea summoned her daughters.

  The three Fieldpea daughters had grown up with books, of course, and so they were wonderfully helpful in the bookshop. If you wanted a mousebook but didn't know exactly which mousebook, and if Emmalina and Glendowner were busy serving tea or making change, then you would talk to Grenadine about it. Or to Almandine. Or to Incarnadine. Or, in weighty matters such as romance, you might talk to all three of them at once.

  "Hmm," Grenadine said, upon hearing Mrs. Nickelpenny's request. After a little thought, she turned to her sisters. "Perhaps she might enjoy Love At The Brink?"

  "Yes," Almandine said, rubbing her chin, "I like that book but, I wonder..."

  "What would you think of Come Away, Mouse?" Incarnadine asked.

  "Oh dear!" Grenadine said. Then to Mrs. Nickelpenny: "Do you like excitement?"

  "Well, it depends, doesn't it?" Mrs. Nickelpenny said, blinking and placing a paw at her throat.

  "Ah! I have it!" Almandine said. "The very book." At that, she climbed a little way up a ladder and, after a brief search, drew out a book and handed it down to their customer.

  Millicent's Surprised Heart, Mrs. Nickelpenny read the title aloud.

  "Perfect!" said Incarnadine. "Just the thing. Bravo, Almandine."

  But Grenadine was cautious. "Do you fancy crying over stories?"

  "I do, actually," Mrs. Nickelpenny said, and blushed.

  "Then there's your book!" Grenadine said, beaming with satisfaction.

  "If all comes right in the end, of course," Mrs. Nickelpenny added, on second thought.

  "Well, I mustn't tell you the ending!" Grenadine said. Then with a smile she leaned toward Mrs. Nickelpenny and whispered, "But you'll be very pleased, I think."

  Just then, Opportune Baggs The Inventor came into The Bookish Mouse wearing more different plaids at the same time than he should have. He tended to accumulate plaids through the day—Opportune Baggs did—as the temperature varied in his workshop. If he started out in
his blue and white plaid shirt, say, and a chill crept over the workshop, he might just slip on his black and green plaid jerkin for comfort and then, if he went out, he might add his red and yellow plaid cap to the blend. And though his plaids were separately attractive, taken altogether they appeared to be rather in…umm, dispute.

  On this day Opportune Baggs, being somewhat preoccupied, had come to The Bookish Mouse directly from the workshop without having passed through the kitchen on his way, where Mrs. Baggs would have normally—and in the nicest sort of way—brought such things as a confusion of plaids to his notice. So he certainly had no intention to offend in his plaids, it's just that on this particular day he was preoccupied, as I say, and the thing he was preoccupied with was the hypotenuse.

  At The Bookish Mouse tea table he spoke to Mrs. Fieldpea about the hypotenuse. "That would be Incarnadine," Mrs. Fieldpea said and waved a paw over her head to engage her daughter's attention in the busy room. When Incarnadine had come and been told of the problem she asked Mr. Baggs what were his specific requirements for a book about the hypotenuse.

  "Something an untrained mouse could understand," he said.

  "Of course," she said. "It's all about triangles isn't it? Let's see what we can find." And off they went to the mousescience section.

  At that moment, Almandine was being asked by Mr. Adverbial Quoty for something practical on poetry and General Random Chewings was inquiring of Grenadine if there were anything available on fusiliers.

  "Practical. Poetry. Hmm," Almandine said to Adverbial Quoty. "Now there are two words I've never used in the same thought!"

  "Fusiliers," Grenadine said to General Chewings, "I'm afraid you must first tell me what fusiliers are, General."

  While these conversations were going forward, Merchanty Swift came into the bookshop.

  The appearance of Merchanty Swift in The Bookish Mouse wrought a certain noticeable effect upon Grenadine, Almandine and Incarnadine. They all looked at one another, significantly, felt suddenly warm and began to be slightly flustered. Almandine actually fanned herself.

  "Yes, well, fusils are muskets, aren't they?" The General was saying to Grenadine as she watched Merchanty Swift spread the acorn butter across his oat-seed cake in a remarkably debonair way, she thought. "Fusiliers then, you see, would be those units which are furnished with fusils.

  Almandine was straining to see if Merchanty Swift took sugar when Adverbial Quoty at just the wrong time put a difficult passage from Mr. T. S. Eliot right in front of her, making her view of Merchanty Swift at that moment as obscure to her as Mr. T. S. Eliot's poetry was to Adverbial Quoty.

  Incarnadine was hoping that Opportune Baggs might agree quickly that the little gray text entitled Triangles And Things was just what he wanted so that she might then be free to go and help a certain handsome other customer across the room who seemed in imminent danger of finishing his refreshments and leaving The Bookish Mouse straightaway. But, just as Mr. Baggs was about to make his decision, he was distracted. Indeed, every mouse in the room was distracted!

  A lemming had just come into The Bookish Mouse. And not only a lemming but a lemming who stood for some few moments, just inside the doorway, looking awkward and uncomfortable and somewhat sinister. When he saw that all eyes were upon him, the lemming abruptly snatched a book from the nearest shelf and pretended to take an interest in it. But any mouse who watched saw that he was looking right over the top of the book's pages and was, in fact, searching the face of every creature in The Bookish Mouse.

  After he had his look at everyone, the lemming stuffed his pockets with teacakes and left without saying a word. And he was not to be seen again by the mice, that lemming, until he returned to Tottensea Burrows late one night in a drenching rainstorm.

  Soon after the lemming left, Merchanty Swift, apparently having finished his business—or at least his refreshments—left as well. Grenadine's, Almandine's and Incarnadine's hearts settled down a little and they went on with their business.

  In the end, Opportune Baggs took Triangles And Things on approval. General Random Chewings left off looking for books about fusiliers and had a cup of tea, instead. Adverbial Quoty sat for quite a long time by himself in an overstuffed chair reading bravely at a poem called "A Cooking Egg" until, giving up on it utterly, he bought himself a reasonably portable rhyming dictionary and went out.

  Mrs. Nickelpenny had to go right home from The Bookish Mouse to start Merchanty Swift's dinner. But later, after the washing up, she retired to her rooms, got into bed and, as was her habit, read until she fell asleep—somewhere after the part where Millicent had been orphaned and sent away to the workhouse.

  CHAPTER 3

  An Evening With the Baggses

  Opportune Baggs The Inventor was much more than an inventor. In fact, there were those who said he was a renaissance mouse and, in a way, I suppose he was, though certainly not a commercially successful renaissance mouse—whatever kind of thing that would be. But he was definitely more than an inventor. He had, in fact, an entire galaxy of careers—so many that it became an embarrassment for him to iterate them all and it was this embarrassment which made him content when the word "inventor" became attached to his name. Inventing was not any more successful than his other careers, but it had this advantage: it was one thing, inventing, and not an entire list of things. So it was to be hoped that when mice asked him at picnics and cotillions and things what it was that he did—and some mice invariably want to know what it is you do—and he replied that he was an inventor, those mice would then be able to imagine him doing that one thing and not hopping about from book writing to picture painting to manufacturing speculative products to delivering newspapers and things like that. And, if one thinks about it, "inventing" turns out to be a word that can actually apply to almost everything he did—writing, painting and manufacturing, certainly, and obviously enough, inventing.

  But I wouldn't have you think the mouse a failure. He made some inventions which actually worked. Once, for example, having passed a bad afternoon—on a Tuesday—smashing whortleberries for Mrs. Baggs's jam in several impractical ways, he invented—on a Wednesday—a nifty little appliance which answered to a previously unrecognized need in the field mouse kitchen. And, though not exactly a gold mine, the Baggs Crankable Whortleberry Reducer did bring in the odd mouseshilling from time to time.

  In addition, he had a few pieces of fiction in print and at the time of these events had great hope for a small humorous book about humans which he had got up and which he thought might find some acceptance among field mice at least. He had first sent it to a human publishing company called Little, Brown. When they didn't want it he sent it off to Slightly Smaller Than Average, Pink. They didn't care for it either, and so he tried just one more time at Large, Garish Yellow, but, unhappily, they rejected it as well. Giving up on human publication, then, he packed the thing off to RodentHouse who snapped it up immediately and made quite a respectable little mousebook out of it.

  He also placed a piece of poetry occasionally through the mails (but poetry doesn't pay anything, even among humans) and he sold paintings at fairs and bazaars (his pieces were on the whole, I would say, in the Impressionist style) but, by and large, he was not hugely successful at any of the business kinds of things he did.

  So, though almost never in despair, Opportune Baggs The Inventor often needed encouragement. And, as so often happens (among field mice, at least) the one mouse in the whole world who most loved to help and encourage Opportune Baggs was actually a member of his own mousehold.

  Octavia Baggs was a wonderful mousewife who cheerfully did all sorts of things to help out with expenses while her husband was doing his inventions and books and paintings and things. She did some extra sewing here and there, she gave fipple flute lessons, she catered a picnic or two and she also helped out in a clerical sort of way down at Berryseed Investments when they needed an extra paw. All these things she did while also minding the children, keeping burrow, and doing t
he shopping, not to mention providing various support services to Mr. Baggs, himself—things like helping him mix his paints (he was slightly colorblind) or copying out his manuscripts so a mouse could read them. And, about that, Mr. Baggs's penmanship left so much to be desired that he would sometimes say to Mrs. Baggs as he handed her his latest composition for her opinion, "Sorry, dear."

  She would then sit down to read the new piece and from time to time would say something like, "Excuse me, darling, this word...is it 'figwort' or 'toadflax,' I can't quite..."

  Mr. Baggs would then look over her shoulder at the errant bit of penmanship.. "Hmm," he would say. "Well might you wonder. It's neither, actually. It's 'horse nettle' I'm afraid."

  At that point she would say something generous, such as, "Oh yes, I can see, now, that it is 'horse nettle.' Something about the 'h' led me off I think." She would then sometimes add, gently, "If only you had a Mousewriter."

  That would normally be followed by a sigh from Mr. Baggs, after which he would say, wistfully, "Ah, if only anyone had a Mousewriter."

  And there is more to say about Octavia Baggs. She was an excellent conversationalist, quite well read-up on things, with very good tastes in literature and a keen eye for flower arranging. A warm and tender-hearted mouse with an attractive sense of humor, she was wise in counsel, saw often to the pith of things, and had no tolerance whatsoever for pretense or sophistry of any type. She was, as her husband told me, near as any mouse could get to the perfect wife (though she may have had a slight tendency, he said, to throw away things which he might need later).

  She also won at gin rummy. Embarrassingly often. And she could cook!

  I well remember one occasion at the Baggses' table when she served a mighty aubergine au gratin with a garnish of fresh basil and buttery onion. This was preceded by pumpkin soup and followed by mulberry sundaes which the children loved very much. It was a wonderful time of food and talk and happiness followed by a bedtime ritual which I must describe to you in some detail.