“Just as well for him,” said John.
“Yes, but just as well for us, too,” said Mr. Brown.
He turned to Janet.
“You’ve been very clever in your choice of house,” he said. “One of the giants here keeps mice as pets, it would appear, so the place must to be free of cats. Well done, my dear Janet.”
“Thank you, Mr. Brown,” Janet replied. I can’t call him by his first name, she thought, because I don’t know what it is, and I don’t really want to ask him. Perhaps we’ll never know what it is.
“There’s lots of food around, too,” she said.
“Which means,” said John, “that there’ll be lots of other house mice around,” and at that very moment, a mouse came out through a hole in the molding.
“You’re right, mate,” he said to John, “but there’s plenty for all of us. The giants here are lovely people, especially the smallest one of the three. No cats—as you can smell—no dogs, no traps, no poison, and they leave food all over the place. You’ve struck lucky, you lot. Welcome to Liberty Hall!”
5
“He seemed a happy sort of chap,” said John to Janet as the mouse disappeared down its hole. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Brown?”
“I think,” said Mr. Brown, “that he and his fellows have plenty to be happy about. He’s right—we have struck lucky.”
For the rest of that night, they all explored the Mousery. None of the fancy mice were as rude as the first pink-eyed white buck had been, but all were a bit standoffish.
“Shouldn’t we get moving?” asked Janet as the first light of dawn came in through the window. “We don’t want one of the giants to come and find us in here.”
“Why not, Mom?” asked Beaumont.
“Because they might not want nine more mice in their house,” said Janet. “Let’s all go down that hole in the molding and find where it leads.”
So they all did. As they made their way down, their sharp ears heard a lot of mouse noises. There were runways through which came sounds of mice, above and below them. They came at last to the cellar of number 16, in which there were a good many mice, all of whom greeted the newcomers in a friendly fashion.
Above their heads, Bill Black came into the Mousery in his pajamas (his bedroom was next door) to give his pets their breakfast. He filled the food dish in each cage with canary seed, made sure that all the mice had clean water to drink, and, of course, talked to the occupants of every cage. Bill was sure that pets like dogs and cats enjoyed being talked to, so why should mice be any different?
In the last cage was a chocolate doe, all by herself because she was soon to have babies. Bill took a very small bit of broken cookie from a tin and put it down in front of her nose.
“D’you know,” he said to her, “what I’d love to do? I’d love to tame a wild mouse. I bet noone’s ever done that. I’d have to catch one first though—a young one.” Even as he said these last words, Bill heard a little scratching noise, and there, coming out of the hole in the molding, was a young house mouse.
Beaumont, the brightest, most adventurous, and now indeed the boldest of John and Janet’s six children, had heard the sound of Bill’s voice from the cellar below and had scuttled back up the runway to see what a giant looked like. Never in his short life had he seen one before.
How strange! thought Bill. Just the kind of mouse that I need, but how do I catch it?
Very slowly, he took another piece of cookie from the tin. Very slowly, he moved toward the young mouse, who crouched by the hole below, whiskers twitching. Very slowly, Bill Black offered the piece of cookie to Beaumont Robinson.
They looked into each other’s eyes and each had much the same feelings. They liked the look of one another.
This is a very bold little house mouse, thought Bill. Could I make a pet of him?
This is a very nice giant, thought Beaumont. I’m not afraid of him at all.
He took a bite of cookie.
“Delicious!” he said.
All Bill heard, of course, was a squeak, but it sounded like a happy squeak. Suddenly, the young mouse turned and disappeared down the hole.
“Dad!” cried Beaumont as he reached the cellar. “There’s ever such a nice giant up above us. He gave me a lovely piece of cookie. Come up and see him!” and he turned and dashed up the runway again, followed by Ambrose and Camilla and Desdemona and Eustace and Felicity.
After them went Janet, calling, “Come back, children!” and after her went John, calling, “Come back, Janet!”
To his surprise, Bill found himself looking at five more mousekins, and then to his astonishment, two adult mice emerged from the hole.
Mom and Dad and six kids, he thought, and crumbled more cookie on the floor. They were all feeding greedily when another mouse came up out of the hole, a mouse that, Bill could see, looked very old and was a bit wobbly on its legs. Immediately the mousekins surrounded it, squeaking happily.
Must be the grandfather, thought Bill. How could he know that they were all saying, “Come on, Uncle Brown! Have some cookie!” or that Janet and John were saying, “Yes, help yourself, Mr. Brown”?
The mice listened as the giant made noises. How could they know that he was saying, “What a lovely family! Wherever did you come from? Would you like me to make you a special home, here in the Mousery? I don’t mean a cage, I don’t want to shut you up, but somewhere comfy and warm for you? How would you like that?”
6
In fact, the Robinson family and their friend Mr. Brown never did get to live in the Mousery at number 16. To be sure, they came up from the cellar whenever they heard the sound of Bill’s voice as he talked to his pet mice. They knew he would always give them something to eat. Beaumont was the first of them who actually took food from the giant’s hand, but the others soon did too.
I wanted to tame a wild mouse, thought Bill, and now it looks as though I’ve tamed nine! And I daresay there’ll be more before long. I must make a proper home for them.
So one day, when the Robinsons and Mr. Brown came up from the cellar, they found a large shallow box on the floor of the Mousery. Bill had put bedding in it, over which he had scattered a lot of canary seed, and by the time John Robinson and his family and his old friend had eaten it all, they felt quite at home.
So that when Janet said, “Well, I suppose we’d better get back down to the cellar,” John said, “Why?”
“It is very comfortable here, Janet,” said Mr. Brown.
“Come on, Mom, let’s stay,” said Beaumont.
“Yes, let’s!” chorused Ambrose and Camilla and Desdemona and Eustace and Felicity.
So they did. But not for long, because soon two things happened. First, the rapidly growing mousekins decided that living with the pet mice was a bit boring, so they went back to the cellar where they could play with their wild friends. Only Beaumont stayed. He liked being with his friend the giant, and he was interested in getting to know the pet mice. He talked politely to them, and some of them responded in quite a friendly way.
The second thing to happen was that Janet had another lot of babies—nine this time: six boys and three girls.
Gilbert, Hermione, Inigo, Julius, Kingsley, Lindsay, Marmaduke, Niobe, and Olivia.
“Only eleven to go, John,” said his old friend, out of Janet’s hearing.
“What d’you mean, Mr. Brown?” John asked.
“Eleven more and you’ll have finished your first alphabet of names.”
“Gosh!” said John, and “Gosh!” echoed Beaumont.
“I only hope,” said Mr. Brown, “that I’m still around to see the alphabet completed.”
“Why wouldn’t you be, Uncle Brown?” asked Beaumont.
“Well, I’m not as young as I was.”
“You’ll go on for a while yet, Mr. Brown,” said John.
But he was wrong.
One morning a few days later, Bill woke up and went into the Mousery to look at what he thought of as his “tame wild mice.”
There were two boxes on the floor now, for Bill had supplied a small one as a single room for the mouse he thought of as “Granddad.”
In the big box Bill could see Janet suckling her newborn nine, watched by John and Beaumont. In the small box Granddad lay comfortably, having breakfast in bed. Not wanting to disturb anyone, Bill tiptoed away.
Mr. Brown spent a lot of his time asleep, but he still had some appetite, and John and Beaumont brought him choice bits of food.
As they had been collecting it that morning, Beaumont said, “You always call Uncle Brown ‘Mr. Brown,’ don’t you, Dad? Why don’t you use his first name?”
“I don’t know it.”
“Can’t you ask him?”
“I don’t want to. He’d have told me if he’d wanted to.”
I’ll ask him, thought Beaumont. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He’s nice, Uncle Brown is. He’ll tell me his first name.
“Uncle Brown,” said Beaumont, climbing into the small box that afternoon. “Will you tell me what your first name is? I’d like to know.”
The old mouse did not reply.
He has gotten a bit deaf lately, thought Beaumont, and more loudly he said, “Uncle Brown! Can you hear me?”
But there was no answer.
With his nose Beaumont touched the body of the old mouse. It was stone cold.
Just then Bill came into the Mousery with some bits of cookie that he’d saved as a treat for his tame wild mice. He saw that one of the youngsters was in Granddad’s box. It looked up at him and squeaked.
“He’s dead!” cried Beaumont. “Look, giant, Uncle Brown is dead!”
Oh dear, thought Bill as he stood and stared down. Poor old Granddad.
7
All up and down, in both the even- and the odd-numbered houses in Simple Street, mice were being born. Mice were dying, too, in the jaws of cats or traps, or of poisoning, or simply—like Mr. Brown—of old age. But never before had a mouse been given such a funeral as Mr. Brown was.
“One thing I do know,” said Bill Black as he fed his fancy mice, “and that is, I’m not just going to chuck poor old Granddad in the trash. He shall have a proper burial in the garden.”
Heaven only knows how Beaumont knew what was going on in the brain of his friend the young giant, but the fact remains that when Bill had dug a hole, he suddenly realized that there were seven little mourners at the graveside. Only Janet could not come out to pay her last respects.
“I can’t leave the babies unprotected. Mr. Brown wouldn’t have wanted me to,” she said to John.
But when Bill had carefully put the body in the grave, John and Ambrose and Beaumont and Camilla and Desdemona and Eustace and Felicity all crept to the edge for a last look at their old friend—“Uncle” to the young ones, “Mister” always to John and Janet, and, had they known it, “Granddad” to the giant who was shoveling the earth back over him.
That night Bill cleaned out the small box on the floor of the Mousery but left it where it was. It’ll do for a spare room, he thought. When these nine new mousekins get too boisterous, their parents can get some peace in it.
Time passed, and at number 16, Gilbert, Hermione, Inigo, Julius, Kingsley, Lindsay, Marmaduke, Niobe, and Olivia went down to join their older brothers and sisters in all the fun and games that went on in the cellar. John came out of the spare room and settled himself comfortably beside Janet in the big box.
“D’you think we’ll have any more babies, dear?” he asked her.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” she replied.
The one member of the family who was different from the rest—as he always had been—was Beaumont. Once his father had left the spare room, he took it over so he could be near his new friends
Because he had grown so close to the young giant, Beaumont had seen a good deal of the fancy mice. He would go up and down the cages on the low tables in the Mousery and chat with them through the bars—the pink-eyed whites, the black-eyed whites, the chocolates, the fawns, the plum-colored mice, and the Dutch mice. Most were civil to him (even the bad-tempered pink-eyed buck), and, though he did not know it, quite a few of the young does rather fancied this friendly, talkative young buck.
Bill noticed that his tame pet house mouse spent a lot of time looking and squeaking at one very pretty plum-colored doe. He offered a bit of food to Beaumont, who climbed onto the palm of the giant’s hand as usual, and then he popped him into an empty cage and, catching the pretty plum-colored doe, put her in too.
One morning, Bill woke to the sound of much squeaking from the big box on the Mousery floor.
“I want to be alone, John,” Janet was saying. “Go away, please.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to have some more babies.”
“Gosh!” said John.
Don’t have more than eleven, he thought, because then we’ll reach the end of the alphabet, like Mr. Brown said. How on earth will I think of names beginning with X or Z? I’ll ask Beaumont, he might know. But there was no sign of his son.
John climbed up and went along the tables, looking into each cage. In the last cage of all was a pretty little fancy doe, a plum-colored one, but she was not alone.
“Beaumont!” cried John. “What are you doing in that cage?”
“Just having a chat with a friend, Dad. I’ll be out soon. How’s Mom?”
“Having babies,” said John.
“Gosh!” said Beaumont.
When John returned later to the big box, Janet had had the babies.
“How many?” asked John.
“Eleven,” replied Janet.
As they spoke, Bill was letting his pet house mouse out of the fancy plum-colored doe’s cage, and soon Beaumont appeared.
“How on earth,” his father said to him out of Janet’s hearing, “am I going to think of names beginning with X or Z ?”
“Easy, Dad,” said Beaumont. “Just call it ‘Ecks’ or ‘Zed,’ boy or girl. By the way, Dad,” he went on, “I think you might like to know something, something that I guess Uncle Brown would have been pleased about.”
“What?” asked John.
“Before very long,” said Beaumont, “I am going to be a dad, Dad.”
“Gosh!” said John Robinson. “My whiskers! Fancy that! And you’re right, Beaumont—Uncle Brown would have been very pleased. Gosh!”
Text copyright © 2007 by Foxbusters Ltd.
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Nick Bruel
First published in Great Britain by Puffin Books, an imprint of the Penguin Group
Published in the United States by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
All rights reserved
Book design by Jaime Putorti
eISBN 9781429998260
First eBook Edition : May 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
King-Smith, Dick.
The mouse family Robinson / Dick King-Smith; illustrated by Nick Bruel.
—1st American ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After a close call with the cat who stalks the hallways, a family of wild mice, including adventurous, young Beaumont and elderly Uncle Brown, emigrates to a more mouse-friendly house down the block.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59643-326-7
ISBN-10: 1-59643-326-4
[1. Mice-Fiction. 2. Family life--Fiction.] I. Bruel, Nick, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.K5893Mq 2008
[Fic]--dc22
2008011139
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