They went all over the city, and the senator showed them all the fine buildings and parks and monuments, and last they came to the White House. And there was the President out on the front porch, smiling and bowing to them, and as they filed past, he shook them each by a claw or a paw or a hoof. Even Eek and Quik and Eeny and Cousin Augustus overcame their timidity and put their tiny paws into the President’s big hand. They were all very proud.
And then they went on with the band playing a different tune every ten minutes, and the people cheering and waving handkerchiefs. When they got to the edge of the city, the band stopped and the senator made them a speech, which began:
“Friends and constituents, I am very sensible of the honour which you have done me to-day. To welcome a delegation of the home folks to the Nation’s Capital is one of the few pleasures that cheer the burdened brow of those whose stern duty it is to keep their shoulder always to the wheel of the ship of State. And that reminds me of the story of the two Irishmen.”
He told the story, and the animals laughed politely, although they did not see anything very funny about it, and that is why it is not written down here. Nor is the rest of the senator’s speech written down, for the animals did not understand much of it, and I am not at all sure that the senator did either. But all agreed that it was a stirring speech.
Then the senator said good-bye to the adventurers, and the band played “Auld Lang Syne,” and the animals went on their way.
“Well,” said Mrs. Wiggins with a sigh, as she dropped off to sleep that night, “we certainly had a grand time. But I do wish I knew what a constituent is.”
VII
One afternoon as the animals were marching along southward, they came to a deep, dark pine wood. It was a warm day, for they were getting near Florida now, and the road was very rough and stony. They were all hot and tired and cross. Even the good-natured Mrs. Wiggins grumbled as they plodded along between the rows of tall, gloomy trees.
“I wish these woods would come to an end,” she said. “I never saw such a place! Nothing but pine needles—no grass, no water. And it’s almost supper-time, too.”
Robert put his nose up in the air and sniffed. “I smell rain,” he said. And just as he said it, there came a long, low grumble of distant thunder.
“Well, we have got to find a shed or a barn or something,” said Hank, the old, white horse. “I’m not going to stand under a tree in a thunder shower for anybody.”
“My goodness!” said Henrietta crossly. “What’s the good of talking! Why don’t you do something? Jinx, why don’t you climb a tree and see if you can see a barn?”
This was sensible advice, so Jinx climbed up to the top of the tallest pine he could find. When he came down, he said: “I saw the sun going down in the west, and I saw a thunder-storm coming up in the south. And the woods go on for miles and miles. But about half a mile farther along there is a little log house. And there is a chimney on the house, and there is smoke going into the chimney.”
“Coming out of the chimney, you mean,” said Hank.
“I mean just what I say,” said Jinx. “There is smoke coming from all parts of the sky and gathering into a cloud and pouring down the chimney.”
“Fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Henrietta. “I never heard of such nonsense!”
“I don’t know whether it’s nonsense or not,” said the cat, “but that’s what I saw. If you’re so smart, why don’t you climb up the tree and take a look yourself?”
Henrietta didn’t dare climb the tree, so she said: “Fiddlesticks!” again in a very loud voice, and walked off.
It was getting darker and darker, and the thunder was rumbling and rolling and coming nearer and nearer.
“Well, there’s no use quarrelling about it,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “If there’s a house, there’s a barn, and if there’s a barn, maybe we can get into it, out of the rain. I’m going along.” And as this was a very sensible speech, they all started along after her.
Pretty soon they saw the log house. It sat back from the road, and was almost hidden by the trees and bushes that grew close up to its walls, so that if Jinx had not seen it from the tree-top, they might have walked right by and never noticed it. And sure enough, round the top of the chimney was whirling what looked like a cloud of smoke. It whirled round and round, and then plunged down, and as the animals had never seen smoke going the wrong way before, they just stood and stared at it.
“What did I tell you?” said Jinx.
But Henrietta didn’t answer him; she went up close to the house and looked and looked; and although it was getting pretty dark, she saw that it wasn’t smoke after all, but a flock of birds, who were coming from every direction and dropping down the chimney.
“There’s your smoke!” she exclaimed scornfully. “Chimney-swallows! They live in the chimney, and they’re going home to sleep. Smoke, indeed! That’s the cat of it! Jumping at conclusions!”
“I’ll jump at you if you say any more,” said Jinx, “and pull all your tail feathers out.”
“Come, come,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “Stop your fighting, animals. If there are swallows in that chimney, it means that there hasn’t been a fire built in the house in a long time. And that means that nobody lives there. Let’s get inside.”
Bang, bang—bingle BOOM! went the thunder. And the animals made a rush for the door and got inside just as the rain came down with a swish and a rattle.
Bang, bang—bingle BOOM!
There was only one room in the house, and in it were two chairs and a table and an empty barrel and a pile of old newspapers. Opposite the door was a big fire-place, and beside the fire-place was a neat pile of firewood. But everything was very dusty. Nobody had lived in the house in a long time.
Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents, and the thunder and lightning were very bad indeed. But the animals were happy because they were dry. Only the mice, Eeek and Quik and Eeny and Cousin Augustus, were rather frightened, and at the first really sharp flash of lightning they dived down an old mouse hole by the fire-place and didn’t come up until the storm was over.
After the thunder and lightning had gone farther away again, and the rain had settled down to a good, steady, all-night pour, Robert said: “It’s getting cold. I wish Mr. Bean was here to build us a fire.”
“There are some matches up here,” said Charles, the rooster, who had perched on the mantel over the fire-place.
“I believe I could build one myself,” said Robert. “I’ve seen him do it often enough. Chuck down a couple matches, Charles.”
“And what about all those swallows in the chimney?” asked Henrietta. “I suppose you never thought about them!”
“We’ll invite ’em to come down and sit around the fire with us,” said Robert. He called up to the swallows and invited them down, and pretty soon they began dropping down in twos and threes. They circled round the room, and then took their places in rows along the walls, for swallows don’t perch as other birds do, holding on by their claws,—they hang themselves up by the little hooks they have on the tops of their wings. There were so many of them that the log walls were covered with them, and they looked like a beautiful, shining black tapestry.
Then Robert built the fire with newspapers and wood, and he held a match between his teeth and scratched it on the floor and dropped it on the papers. He singed his nose before he got through, but at last he got the papers to burning. Then all the animals had to squat down on the hearth and blow the fire to make it go, because he hadn’t built it very well. But at last it burned up brightly, and then they all sat round and talked.
“I’d like to know who lived in this house,” said Charles.
“Nobody knows,” said the oldest swallow, who was hanging just over the door. And all the other swallows said: “That’s so,” and rustled their wings.
“Nobody lived here in my grandfather’s time,” said the oldest swallow.
“That’s so,” said the other swallows again.
“
And nobody lived here in my great-grandfather’s time.”
“That’s so.”
“And nobody lived here in my great-great-grandfather’s time.”
“That’s so.”
“And nobody——”
“Excuse me,” said Robert politely, “but I don’t think you need go any farther back. Don’t people ever come here at all?”
“Once in a while—” the swallow began slowly. Before he could go on, the youngest swallow piped up: “That’s so.”
The oldest swallow glared at him crossly, and his mother spanked him soundly for speaking out of turn. For it is a custom among the swallows for the oldest and wisest one to do all the talking, and for the others to say: “That’s so” when he has finished. They do this because there are so many of them, and if they all talked at once in their little twittery voices, nobody would be able to understand what they were talking about.
“Once in a while,” the oldest swallow went on, when the little swallow had been spanked and sent off to cry softly in a corner, “men come out to this house to look for the money that is supposed to be hidden here. It is said that a bag of twenty-dollar gold pieces is concealed in or somewhere near the house. But if that is so, nobody has ever found it.”
The animals were all very much excited at this piece of news. Of course they could not use money themselves, but they thought how nice it would be if they could find the gold and take it back to Mr. Bean, who needed money so badly. Then he could buy all the things he wanted, and could repair the barn and the hen house, and perhaps put stoves in them to keep the animals warm in cold weather. So they all started hunting for the place where the money was hidden.
Hank tapped with his hoof on the floor and the walls, to see if they sounded hollow, and Jinx, the cat, climbed up on all the shelves and peered into cupboards, and Eek and Quik and Eeny and Cousin Augustus went back down the old mouse hole in the corner and scurried round under the floor and explored every crack and crevice. Even Mr. and Mrs. Webb slipped into the many cracks in the walls and fire-place and looked round. But they didn’t find any sign of the money.
“The only place we haven’t looked is the chimney,” said Freddy, the pig, at last.
“It is not in the chimney,” said the oldest swallow. And all the other swallows said: “That’s so.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to give it up,” said Freddy. “It isn’t in the house, and if it’s buried outside, we could never possibly find it.”
And so they gave it up and came back and sat round the fire and told stories and played guessing games till bedtime.
VIII
Early the next morning Mr. Webb slipped out to get a breath of fresh air before breakfast. It was a bright clear morning. He took a long drink of fresh cold water from a raindrop, and then strolled along over the pine needles, humming to himself.
Oh, the winding road is long, is long,
But never too long for me.…
Pretty soon he met an ant.
“Good-morning,” he said politely. “I am a stranger in these parts. I wonder if you can tell me if there is any good fly-catching in the vicinity?”
Now, almost always, if you speak to an ant, no matter how pleasantly, it will walk right by without answering. Ants do this because they are always busy, and they think conversation is a waste of time. But Mr. Webb was a fine-looking spider, and the ant was rather flattered at being spoken to by him. So she said:
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. But there aren’t many spiders in our neighbourhood, so I should think not.”
“Ah, that’s a pity,” said Mr. Webb. “But it seems a very pleasant neighbourhood.”
“We like it,” said the ant. “Although it’s not as pleasant as it used to be before the robber ants came. They live in an old stump down in the woods, and they are all the time stealing our children and robbing our storehouses.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Webb. “That is very trying.”
“Indeed you may say so!” she replied. “It’s hard enough to bring up a family of fifty children these days without having robbers about. We had to leave our old house and build a new one, deeper under the ground, so it wouldn’t be so easy for them to break into it. Perhaps you’d like to see it?”
“I should be charmed,” said the spider; and so she led him to where there was a little hole in the ground, out of which ants were carrying bits of dirt and sand, which they dropped outside before hurrying back for more. She led him down the hole and into a long tunnel. Part of the tunnel was so narrow that Mr. Webb had trouble squeezing through, but at last they came out in a large room which was really the ants’ dining-room. Here there were dozen of ants running to and fro, popping in and out of doorways; some of them bringing food which they fed to the ant children, and others carrying out dirt from the tunnels and corridors they were building. They were all much too busy to pay any attention to their visitor, and they merely nodded and said: “How do,” and went on with their work.
“It is a very pleasant house,” said Mr. Webb, when he had been shown through all the many rooms and passages.
“Ah, you should see our other house!” said the ant with a sigh. “Gold floors in the reception hall and the dining-room, and a gold ceiling in the nursery! There wasn’t a finer one in the woods.”
Mr. Webb pricked up his ears. “I should think not!” he said. “Gold floors, eh? Now, may I ask how that happened?”
“Nobody knows,” said the ant. “When my grandmother first moved into the house, some of them were there, and then later, when we enlarged the house and dug out more rooms, we found more of them.”
“I should like to see that,” said Mr. Webb.
“If I weren’t so busy this morning, I would take you over and show them to you,” said the ant.
“I am afraid I am keeping you from your work,” said Mr. Webb; “so I’ll just run along. But if you will show me where your old house is, I’ll run in and look at it on my way back to join my friends.”
So the ant went up to the door with him and showed him just which way to go, and then he thanked her politely for her hospitality and said good-bye.
Without much trouble he found the house that the ants had moved out of, and he crawled down the tunnel into the empty rooms that had once been a happy home, but were now empty and deserted. Soon he stood in the dining-room. It wasn’t very large. Even Mr. Webb, who was a very small spider, could walk across it in five or six steps. But sure enough the floor was of bright, shining, yellow gold. And there were raised letters on it, and the figure of an eagle.
Now before he was married to Mrs. Webb, Mr. Webb had travelled round a good deal. And once he had lived in a bank. So he knew what a twenty-dollar gold piece looks like. And now he knew that the floor of this ants’ dining-room was a twenty-dollar gold piece.
He did not wait to look at the other rooms, but hurried back to the log house as fast as he could go. For he remembered what the swallow had told them about the bag of gold, and he knew that he had found it.
This was what had happened. The ants who had first built that house had happened to begin digging just where the bag of gold was buried. It had been buried a long, long time, and the cloth had rotted away. The ants had tunnelled in and around the gold coins, and wherever one lay flat, they had made it the floor or ceiling of a room.
Mr. Webb got back just as the animals were ready to start. They gathered round him with their ears as close to him as they could get, so they could hear his tiny voice, and he told his story, and then they all rushed out to the ant house, and the two dogs and Freddy, the pig, started digging. Freddy dug with his long sharp nose, but the dogs dug with their forefeet. And in no time at all they had uncovered a great shining heap of gold coins.
Then they were all very glad, and Charles, the rooster, was so excited that he crowed and crowed.
But Henrietta said: “My goodness! Stop that noise! I don’t see what you are all so happy about anyway. Now you’ve dug it up, what are you going to
do with it?”
“Take it back to Mr. Bean, of course,” said Robert.
“What are you going to do about going to Florida, then?” asked Henrietta. “Are you going to lug it all the way to Florida, and then back again? And what are you going to carry it in?”
“We hadn’t thought about that,” said the animals.
“Well, you’d better think about it now,” said Henrietta. “The only thing you can do with the gold now is to bury it again, and get it when we come back from Florida. But I’m sure I don’t know how we’re ever going to take it to Mr. Bean.”
“Oh, we can carry it in baskets or something,” said Freddy. “Don’t you worry about that, hen.”
So they scraped the earth back into the hole and covered up the treasure, and then they started along.
IX
As they went on southwest, the days grew hotter. Away back up north, at the other end of the road down which they were travelling, snow-flakes were flying, and Mr. Bean’s breath was like smoke in the frosty air when Henrietta’s sisters woke him in the morning and he put his head out of the window to see what the day was going to be like.
But down south the air was soft and warm, and the trees and the fields were green, and the animals tramped along merrily all day, and camped by the road-side at night. The only thing that worried them was how they were to get the gold coins back to Mr. Bean. There were about half a bushel of them, and even if they were in a sack or a basket, they would be much too heavy for one animal to carry, because gold is heavier than almost anything else in the world.
Freddy Goes to Florida Page 4