“Why, I did nothing of the kind,” said Freddy.
“Oh, excuse me, sir,” squealed the rat. “I guess you had to look cross-eyed to see him, because he was on the end of your nose.”
“Oh,” Freddy said. “Well, maybe I did.” He frowned at the rat. “Aren’t you the one that bit me last night?”
“Well, sir—I …”
“Answer yes or no, please,” said Freddy, putting on his Great Detective expression.
“Well, I—yes, I did. But you sat on me, afterwards.”
“I see. You mean we’re even. Maybe you’re right. Although—Oh, good morning, Jinx,” he said, as the cat pushed open the stall door.
“Just dropped in to see if the condemned man was eating the usual hearty breakfast,” said Jinx. He went over and sat down by Simon. “How’s old poisonous this morning?”
Simon opened one eye, then closed it again.
“Let him alone, Jinx,” said Freddy. “He’s got trouble enough coming to him when he gets well. Come on out; I want to talk to you.”
They went out into the barnyard. Charles was just coming across from the henhouse, and Jinx hailed him. “Hi, Charlie, old fighting cock! You certainly put up a great scrap last night. I saw you in there, stomping and gouging and ripping off arms and legs, and I said: Boy, there’s a rooster that could lick his weight in lollipops, and …”
“Oh, shut up!” said Charles crossly. “You know very well I wasn’t there last night. I—well, with this farm invaded by hordes of ferocious rats, would you have expected me to leave my home, my dear wife, and twenty-seven children, totally unprotected? Much as I would like to have been with you, to have stood shoulder to shoulder with my comrades in the fray, my duty confined me to the henhouse. Yes, my friend, the heart that beats beneath this feathered bosom is no craven’s; it …”
“Boloney!” said Jinx. “It was your dear wife Henrietta that confined you to the henhouse, chum, so you wouldn’t get those handsome tailfeathers chewed off. Don’t give us that shoulder to shoulder stuff, and you can cut out the feathered bosom, too.”
Charles hung his head, and Freddy felt sorry for him. The rooster was a braggart, and badly henpecked by his wife, but he wasn’t really a coward. He had once licked a rat in fair fight, and a year or so ago he had gone into Herb Garble’s office in Centerboro and cleaned it out singlehanded. “Charles,” said Freddy, “how’d you like to go up to Mr. Camphor’s with me tomorrow? We’ve got to do something about those aunts of his, and maybe you could help.”
Charles perked up at once. “Command me,” he said magnificently. “It is a pleasure and a privilege to serve Mr. Camphor.”
So the next morning they started out. It was still raining, but though animals don’t mind rain as much as people do, Freddy carried Mrs. Bean’s old plum-colored umbrella. “It won’t do to go into Mr. Camphor’s spick and span parlor all dripping wet,” he said. “And Miss Minerva would have a fit.”
Freddy carried Mrs. Bean’s old plum-colored umbrella.
“She’ll have a fit anyway,” said Charles.
“That’s up to you,” Freddy said. “That’s why I wanted you to come. You think up your floweriest compliments for her.”
They were pretty wet though when they got there. Bannister brought them bath towels to dry off with before they went into the parlor, and they were scrubbing themselves when Miss Minerva appeared.
“My land!” she exclaimed. “You’re dripping all over the rug! Why do you have to come up here on a day like this?”
“Madam,” said Charles, “only the anticipation of seeing you again so soon could have induced us to brave the inclemency of the elements.”
“Well …” said Miss Minerva doubtfully.
“Your gracious presence, ma’am,” the rooster went on, “transforms the gloomiest hours to a day of sparkling sunshine and balmy breezes. In the light of your charming smile the clouds disperse, the sun breaks through, the world is all brightness and glitter.” He bowed deeply.
And a smile did indeed appear on Miss Minerva’s face. It wouldn’t have dispersed any clouds, nor could you have recognized it from Charles’ description, but it was a smile. “Come into the parlor,” she said.
Mr. Camphor had news. The sheriff had phoned to say that Mr. Anderson was sick in bed, but was expected out in a day or two. “Guess he has a hard time getting comfortable, though,” the sheriff had said. “Porky quills in front and bird shot in the rear—has to sleep on his side.”
“Well, that’s nice,” said Freddy. “But it isn’t really any good. For though we’ve broken up his scheme for getting your house and the Beans’, he has got the hotel.”
“Come out on the porch,” said Mr. Camphor, and when they had followed him out there: “Listen,” he said.
The rain had let up, and from across the lake they could hear a faint sound of hammering.
“Carpenters,” said Mr. Camphor. “Plumbers. He’s got them repairing the hotel already. According to the sheriff, he is going to move up there himself as soon as he’s well enough. It’s a shame. But what can we do?”
“I think …” Freddy began. But a voice from the end of the porch interrupted him. “Come here,” it said. He looked, and there was Miss Elmira in her chair, wrapped in shawls and gazing out gloomily at the grey lake.
He went over to her and Charles strutted after him, but Mr. Camphor disappeared in the house.
“Poem,” said Miss Elmira.
“I haven’t written any other gloomy ones yet,” he said.
“Swamp,” said Miss Elmira.
“Oh, you want that one again? All right.” And he recited it, with appropriate sobs and sniffs.
Miss Elmira laughed even more heartily than before, but Charles, who had listened with one claw covering his eyes, broke down and wept bitterly. “Oh! Oh, dear! Oh, dear me!” he said brokenly. “Oh, the sadness! Oh, my desolate heart! How mournfully beautiful! What a masterpiece of despair!”
Freddy thought the rooster was overdoing it, and shook his head at him, for Miss Elmira had stopped laughing. She looked almost disapprovingly at Charles. “Always like that?” she demanded.
“Always,” said Freddy. “Always wallowing in woe, soaked in sorrow, fricasseed in affliction. Worst case I’ve ever known.”
Charles went on sobbing.
Miss Elmira’s shoulders twitched impatiently. Then she said: “Go away.”
“Of course,” said Freddy. “Come, my poor fellow,” and he supported the weeping Charles into the house.
The rooster straightened when they were inside the door. “That was a terrible poem, Freddy,” he said. “If I couldn’t write a better one with one claw tied behind my back …”
“Oh, you’re a wonder,” said Freddy sarcastically. “You fixed things fine with all that bawling! She knew you were making it up.”
“On the contrary,” said Charles. “She was mad, all right, but it was because she had met someone who is gloomier than she is. You’ve got her all wrong. She doesn’t want other people to be gloomy. She wants to be the gloomiest person in the house, herself. What do you suppose she stays here for, if everybody is always trying to cheer her up? She likes it. She wouldn’t stay a minute if everybody sobbed and howled all day long.”
“Oh, pooh,” said Freddy; “that doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, just because you didn’t think of it!” said Charles angrily. “All right, have it your way. But if Camphor wants to get rid of her, he’d better let me handle it, that’s all.”
Freddy really thought that maybe Charles was right, but he knew that if he took up the idea himself the rooster would just sit back and not do anything. So he continued to pooh-pooh the theory until Charles got really mad and said that by George, he’d show them, and stamped out of the house.
Chapter 16
Freddy went in and had a long talk with Mr. Camphor, and at his pressing invitation, stayed for lunch. “I really want you to see, Freddy,” Mr. Camphor said, “what a change a few
compliments have made in Aunt Minerva. Nothing burned, no bawlings out; and she made a batch of peanut brittle last night that—m’m!” He blew a kiss in the air. “It would melt in your mouth!”
So Freddy stayed. A place was set for Charles, but when Bannister announced lunch the rooster couldn’t be found, so they sat down without him. When Miss Minerva came in, Freddy pulled out her chair for her, and she rewarded him with a smile. At least it was intended for a smile. She really just showed her teeth at him. But it wasn’t fair to be too critical of it, Freddy thought, because probably she hadn’t really smiled in a good many years, and she needed practice.
The soufflé was good, the chocolate pie was delicious. “The nectar of the gods!” Mr. Camphor exclaimed with his mouth full, and was not reproved for it. Freddy smacked his lips and said: “M’m! M’mmm!” all through the meal. Miss Minerva became quite sprightly.
“She doesn’t pick on me any more either,” Mr. Camphor said later. “I used the wrong fork at dinner last night, and she didn’t say a word.”
“Then do you still want her to go?” Freddy asked.
Mr. Camphor thought a moment. “Really, you know,” he said, “I don’t believe I do. I haven’t eaten so well in years. But of course there’s Aunt Elmira. Look at her there through the window. What’s the good of having Aunt Minerva cooking for me if Aunt Elmira takes away my appetite?”
“I’ve got to give some thought to that,” said Freddy. “Also to Mr. Eha. We’ve broken up the rat gang all right, and I guess he realizes that the ghost act won’t get him anywhere. But he did get the hotel away from poor Mrs. Filmore. I think we ought to get it back for her.”
Mr. Camphor shook his head. “Nothing can be done about that now. We’ve got her a job, though. I used my influence with Mr. Weezer, in the bank, and they’ve taken her on at a small salary.”
“That’s fine,” said Freddy. “But Eha’s got the hotel, and I don’t see why we can’t use the same tactics against him that he did against Mrs. Filmore. Not rats and ghosts, of course—I’ve got a better idea.” He looked thoughtfully at Mr. Camphor. “How’d you like to go camping again?”
“Oh, I’d like that!” said Mr. Camphor enthusiastically. “We didn’t have much of a go at it before. Ha, the wide open spaces! The mysterious silence of the great forest! The wind shushing through the pines …”
“And the mosquitoes whining through the brush,” said Freddy. “Yeah, it’s pretty nice. But this will be something more than a camping trip. It’ll be an anti-Eha expedition. A war party.”
“Ha, Camphor takes the warpath, eh? Let’s practice our warwhoop.” And he gave a loud yell, batting his open palm against his mouth—“Wa-wa-wa-wa!”
“I don’t think the Indian warwhoop went like that,” Freddy said. “It was more like this.” And then he yelled: “Yi-yi-yi-yi!”
“What on earth are you doing?” said Miss Minerva, coming to the door. She looked at them rather severely, but didn’t fly out at them. And when Mr. Camphor had rather shamefacedly explained, she astonished them by saying: “You’re both wrong. Grandfather showed me. This is the way it went,” and she threw back her head and gave a terrific screech: “Eeeee-yow!”
“Golly,” said Mr. Camphor; “you win, Aunt. Say, how’d you like to go along on this expedition? You used to camp out with grandfather, years ago.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I—well, I suppose Bannister could look after Elmira … H’m … Very well,” she said quickly. “I’ll come.”
Freddy wasn’t too well pleased with this but there was nothing he could do. After lunch he started back to the farm. The rain had stopped. Going down through the Big Woods he heard voices, and then Mrs. Wiggins’ broad white nose pushed through the underbrush, and she came towards him, followed by her two sisters. Charles was riding on Mrs. Wurzburger’s back.
“Where you going?” Freddy asked. “And where’d you go to, Charles? They expected you for lunch.”
Mrs. Wiggins laughed. “We’re going up to call on Miss Elmira. It’s Charles’ idea. He thinks if everybody she sees is gloomier than she is, she’ll either snap out of it, or leave. And we’re good at grief, eh, girls?”
Mrs. Wogus and Mrs. Wurzburger nodded. Then all three cows looked sadly at Freddy, and pulled their mouths down, and fat tears welled out of their big brown mournful eyes and splashed on the ground.
Freddy looked at them a minute, and then he felt the corners of his own mouth droop, and a tightness behind his eyes and a stinging in them, and he said: “Hey, quit it, will you? Darn it, you’re m-making me do it, too! I can’t … Well, goodbye,” he said and pushed quickly past them.
“Hey, quit it, will you … you’re m-making me do it, too!”
He went into the cowbarn and yelled for Mr. Webb, and pretty soon a little black spider came spinning down on a strand of gossamer and landed on his ear. “Hello, Freddy,” he said in his tiny voice. “You know, Mother and I are kind of put out that you haven’t called on us for any help in all this excitement. After all, the Bean farm is our home just as much as it is yours.”
“Well,” said Freddy, “we can use you now all right. Look, can you and Mrs. Webb round up about fifty crickets, and as many fireflies, and some grasshoppers and a centipede or two? Just get those that are willing to volunteer for foreign service; I want their help up at Camphor’s, but only if they want to go.”
“Round up a bushel of ’em if you say so, Freddy. My! Won’t Mother be tickled! She says she’s sick and tired of sitting up there in the roof spinning, spinning, all day long, while all these exciting things are going on. And catching a few flies. Even the flies, she says, aren’t what they were in her young days—horrid skinny things, and half of ’em full of DDT.” Mr. Webb laughed. “You know and I know, Freddy, that flies aren’t any different. Never was much nourishment in ’em anyway. But you know how women are.”
“Sure,” said Freddy. “Well, have your gang in here at four o’clock, eh? I’ll tell you what we’re going to do later.”
Actually, Freddy had only the vaguest idea of what he was going to do. Harass Mr. Anderson, and try to drive him out of the hotel as he had driven Mrs. Filmore. But just how? Oh well, he could always think up seven different ways of doing something.
It was certainly an odd expedition that started from the farm at four o’clock. Freddy and Jinx and Georgie, a snake friend of Freddy’s named Homer, the four mice, and a large flat carton lined with moss, containing the insect volunteers. Among these were Randolph, the beetle and his friend the thousand-legger, Jeffrey. Several wasps who were not needed to guard the rats, and Mr. and Mrs. Pomeroy, would join them next day.
Freddy and Jinx carried the carton between them. It was light, but it made hard going where the ground was rough. The Webbs rode in the carton to keep the volunteers in order. The mice rode on Georgie’s back, and Homer was looped about his neck. Homer had been present on the occasion when the little girl visitor had made Georgie look silly by talking baby talk to him; and like a good many snakes, he thought that a good joke never wore out. He would coil himself affectionately around Georgie’s neck, and then twist himself around in front until his nose was almost against Georgie’s. “Who’s urn’s ickle dolling pupsywups?” he would say in a little sickly-sweet voice, and kiss Georgie on the nose.
Every time he did this, the mice would get to giggling, and that would make Georgie even madder. He would snap at Homer, but the snake was too quick, and would dodge and then whip his coils so tight around the dog’s neck that his eyes bulged. “I hug’m and kiss’m and hug’m and kiss’m,” said Homer. Cousin Augustus giggled so hard he got the hiccups.
At Mr. Camphor’s, while the canoe was being loaded, Freddy and Jinx went around to the porch. Miss Elmira was still there, and around her sat the three cows. They weren’t saying anything. They just sat there, looking as mournful as possible. They stared at Miss Elmira with their great sad eyes, and every now and then one of them would give a low moo of despair. Charle
s was with them, his tailfeathers drooping, a small pocket handkerchief held to his eyes with one claw.
Miss Elmira too, of course, was draped and enveloped in gloom, but Freddy thought she was looking a little impatient. He said to Bannister, who had come out and was looking over their shoulders: “Looks to me as if she was beginning to get enough.”
The butler gave a faint sniffle. “Ah, sir,” he said, “a great tragic actress was lost to the world when Mrs. Wiggins became a cow.”
“Pooh,” said Jinx; “she’s good all right-I’ll hand you that. But there’s more to acting than just sitting still and mugging. An actor acts. You got to give ’em action. Watch me.”
He walked over and stood between Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Wurzburger. “Ma’am,” he said, “you may think you got trouble. You may think you got afflictions that make a monkey out of Job. But listen to me. A: my father was killed by a flatiron last week when he was conducting a backyard concert. B: my mother died of grief. C: my wife and seven children were tied up in a sack and drowned by a wicked butler.” He began to pace up and down. “D: I’ve got rheumatism, hives and hay fever. E:—” Evidently he couldn’t think of anything for E, for he sat down, lifted up his head, and began to wail.
There is no use trying to describe those wails. Multiply any cat you’ve ever heard by ten, and add a few assorted owls, and you might get somewhere near it. They quavered and soared and broke into despairing gobblings, and then rose to a screech again. Mr. Camphor and Miss Minerva came rushing out. “What on earth!” Miss Minerva exclaimed. She looked at the circle of weeping animals about her sister. “Is it—is it something they had for lunch?”
“My goodness, I don’t know where you could get anything for lunch, except maybe live scorpions, that would make them act that way,” said Mr. Camphor.
Freddy explained to Miss Minerva what they were trying to do. But she shook her head. “You may be on the right track. We’ve always been very cheerful with her, and maybe being gloomy might change her. But even as a little girl she was like this. Used to give each of her dolls a handkerchief when she put them to bed, so they could cry in the night. She just wants to be miserable. She can walk around as well as I can, you know. She stays in the wheel chair because it makes her feel like an invalid. I guess having her around like that is what makes me so impatient with Jimson sometimes. I’ve felt I had to be so extra nice to her.” She looked speculatively at her sister. “Well, you animals are so anxious to help, the least I can do is join in.”
Freddy Goes Camping Page 11