Stuart Little (2 page)

Of course, the bathroom
would be dark, too, but Stuart’s father had thoughtfully tied a long string to
the pull-chain of the light. The string reached clear to the floor. By grasping
it as high up as he could and throwing his whole weight on it, Stuart was able to
turn on the light. Swinging on the string this way, with his long bathrobe
trailing around his ankles, he looked like a little old friar pulling the bellrope
in an abbey.

To get to the washbasin,
Stuart had to climb a tiny rope ladder which his father had fixed for him.

George had promised to build
Stuart a small special washbasin only one inch high andwitha little rubber tube
through which water would flow; but George was always saying that he was going
to build something and then forgetting about it. Stuart just went ahead and
climbed the rope ladder to the family washbasin every morning to wash his face
and hands and brush his teeth. Mrs. Little had provided him with a doll’s size
toothbrush, a doll’s size cake of soap, a doll’s size washcloth, and a doll’s
comb—which he used for combing his whiskers. He carried these things in his
bathrobe pocket, and when he reached the top of the ladder he took them out, laid
them neatly in a row, and set about the task of turning the water on. For such
a small fellow, turning the water on was quite a problem.

He had discussed it with his
father one day after making several unsuccessful attempts.

“I can get up onto the
faucet all right,” he explained, “but I can’t seem to turn it on, because I
have nothing to brace my feet against.”

“Yes, I know,” his father
replied, “that’s the whole trouble.”

George, who always listened
to conversations whenever he could, said that in his opinion they ought to
construct a brace for Stuart; and with that he got out some boards, a saw, a
hammer, a screw driver, a brad-awl, and some nails, and started to make a terrific
fuss in the bathroom, building what he said was going to be a brace for Stuart.
But he soon became interested in something else and disappeared, leaving the
tools lying around all over the bathroom floor.

Stuart, after examining this
mess, turned to his father again. “Maybe I could pound the faucet with something
and turn it on that way,” he said.

So Stuart’s father provided
him with a very small, light hammer made of wood; and Stuart found that by
swinging it three times around his head and letting it come down with a crash
against the handle of the faucet, he could start a thin stream of water flowing—enough
to brush his teeth in, anyway, and moisten his washcloth. So every morning,
after climbing to the basin, he would seize his hammer and pound the faucet,
and the other members of the household, dozing in their beds, would hear the
bright sharp plink plink plink of Stuart’s hammer, like a faraway blacksmith,
telling them that day had come and that Stuart was trying to brush his teeth.

IV. Exercise

One fine morning in the
month of May when Stuart was three years old, he arose early as was his custom,
washed and dressed himself, took his hat and cane, and went downstairs into the
living room to see what was doing. Nobody was around but Snowbell, the white
cat belonging to Mrs. Little. Snowbell was another early riser, and this
morning he was lying on the rug in the middle of the room, thinking about the
days when he was just a kitten.

“Good morning,” said Stuart.

“Hello,” replied Snowbell,
sharply.

“You’re up early, aren’t you?”

Stuart looked at his watch. “Yes,”
he said, “it’s only five minutes past six, but I felt good and I thought I’d
come down and get a little exercise.”

“I should think you’d get
all the exercise you want up there in the bathroom, banging around, waking all
the rest of us up trying to get that water started so you can brush your teeth.
Your teeth aren’t really big enough to brush anyway. Want to see a good set?
Look at mine!” Snowbell opened his mouth and showed two rows of gleaming white teeth,
sharp as needles.

“Very nice,” said Stuart. “But
mine are all right, too, even though they’re small. As for exercise, I take all
I can get. I bet my stomach muscles are firmer than yours.”

“I bet they’re not,” said
the cat.

“I bet they are,” said
Stuart. “They’re like iron bands.”

“I bet they’re not,” said
the cat.

Stuart glanced around the
room to see what he could do to prove to Snowbell what good stomach muscles he
had. He spied the drawn window shade on the east window, with its shade cord
and ring, like a trapeze, and it gave him an idea. Climbing to the windowsill
he took off his hat and laid down his cane.

“You can’t do this,” he said
to the cat. And he ran and jumped onto the ring, the way acrobats do in a
circus, meaning to pull himself up.

A surprising thing happened.
Stuart had taken such a hard jump that it started the shade: with a loud snap
the shade flew up clear to the top of the window, dragging Stuart along with it
and rolling him up inside, so that he couldn’t budge.

“Holy mackerel!” said
Snowbell, who was almost as surprised as Stuart Little. “I guess that will
teach him to show off his muscles.”

“Help! Let me out!” cried
Stuart, who was frightened and bruised inside the rolled-up shade, and who
could hardly breathe. But his voice was so weak that nobody heard. Snowbell
just chuckled. He was not fond of Stuart and it didn’t bother him at all that
Stuart was all wrapped up in a window shade, crying and hurt and unable to get
out. Instead of running upstairs and telling Mr. and Mrs. Little about the
accident, Snowbell did a very curious thing. He glanced around to see if anybody
was looking, then he leapt softly to the window sill, picked up Stuart’s hat
and cane in his mouth, carried them to the pantry and laid them down at the entrance
to the mousehole.

When Mrs. Little came down
later and found them there, she gave a shrill scream which brought everybody on
the run.

“It’s happened,” she cried.

“What has?” asked her
husband.

“Stuart’s down the
mousehole.”

V. Rescued

George was in favor of
ripping up the pantry floor. He ran and got his hammer, his screw driver, and
an ice pick.

“I’ll have this old floor up
in double-quick time,” he said, inserting his screw driver under the edge of
the first board and giving a good vigorous pry.

“We will not rip up this
floor till we have had a good search,” announced Mr. Little. “That’s final,
George! You can put that hammer away where you got it.”

“Oh, all right,” said
George. “I see that nobody in this house cares anything about Stuart but me.”

Mrs. Little began to cry. “My
poor dear little son!” she said. “I know he’ll get wedged somewhere.”

“Just because you can’t
travel comfortably in a mousehole doesn’t mean that it isn’t a perfectly
suitable place for Stuart,” said Mr. Little. “Just don’t get yourself all
worked up.”

“Maybe we ought to lower
some food to him,” suggested George. “That’s what the State Police did when a
man got stuck in a cave.” George darted into the kitchen and came running back
with a dish of applesauce. “We can pour some of this in, and it will run down
to where he is.” George spooned out a bit of the applesauce and started to poke
it into the hole.

“Stop that!” bellowed Mr.
Little. “George, will you kindly let me handle this situation? Put that
applesauce away immediately!”

Mr. Little glared fiercely
at George.

“I was just trying to help
my own brother,” said George, shaking his head as he carried the sauce back to
the kitchen.

“Let’s all call to Stuart,”
suggested Mrs. Little. “It is quite possible that the mousehole branches and
twists about, and that he has lost his way.”

“Very well,” said Mr.
Little. “I will count three, then we will all call, then we will all keep
perfectly quiet for three seconds, listening for the answer.” He took out his
watch.

Mr. and Mrs. Little and
George got down on their hands and knees and put their mouths as close as
possible to the mousehole. Then they all called: “Stooooo-art!” And then they all
kept perfectly still for three seconds.

Stuart, from his cramped
position inside the rolled-up shade, heard them yelling in the pantry and
called back, “Here I am!” But he had such a weak voice and was so far inside
the shade that the other members of the family did not hear his answering cry.

“Again!” said Mr. Little. “One,
two, three-Stooooo-art!”

It was no use. No answer was
heard. Mrs. Little went up to her bedroom, lay down, and sobbed. Mr. Little
went to the telephone and called up the Bureau of Missing Persons, but when the
man asked for a description of Stuart and was told that he was only two inches
high, he hung up in disgust. George meantime went down cellar and hunted around
to see if he could find the other entrance to the mousehole. He moved a great
many trunks, suitcases, flower pots, baskets, boxes, and broken chairs from one
end of the cellar to the other in order to get at the section of wall which he
thought was likeliest, but found no hole. He did, however, come across an old
discarded rowing machine of Mr. Little’s, and becoming interested in this,
carried it upstairs with some difficulty and spent the rest of the morning
rowing.

When lunchtime came
(everybody had forgotten about breakfast) all three sat down to a lamb stew
which Mrs. Little had prepared, but it was a sad meal, each one trying not to
stare at the small empty chair which Stuart always occupied, right next to Mrs.
Little’s glass of water. No one could eat, so great was the sorrow. George ate
a bit of dessert but nothing else. When lunch was over Mrs. Little broke out
crying again, and said she thought Stuart must be dead. “Nonsense, nonsense!”
growled Mr. Little.

“If he is dead,” said
George, “we ought to pull down the shades all through the house.” And he raced
to the windows and began pulling down the shades.

“George!” shouted Mr. Little
in an exasperated tone, “if you don’t stop acting in an idiotic fashion, I will
have to punish you.

We are having enough trouble
today without having to cope with your foolishness.”

But George had already run
into the living room and had begun to darken it, to show his respect for the dead.
He pulled a cord and out dropped Stuart onto the window sill.

“Well, for the love of Pete,”
said George. “Look who’s here, Mom!”

“It’s about time somebody
pulled down that shade,” remarked Stuart. “That’s all I can say.” He was quite
weak and hungry.

Mrs. Little was so overjoyed
to see him that she kept right on crying. Of course, everybody wanted to know
how it had happened.

“It was simply an accident
that might happen to anybody,” said Stuart. “As for my hat and cane being found
at the entrance to the mousehole, you can draw your own conclusions.”

VI. A Fair Breeze

One morning when the wind
was from the west, Stuart put on his sailor suit and his sailor hat, took his
spyglass down from the shelf, and set out for a walk, full of the joy of life
and the fear of dogs. With a rolling gait he sauntered along toward Fifth
Avenue, keeping a sharp lookout.

Whenever he spied a dog
through his glass, Stuart would hurry to the nearest doorman, climb his
trouserleg, and hide in the tails of his uniform. And once, when no doorman was
handy, he had to crawl into a yesterday’s paper and roll himself up in the
second section till danger was past.

At the corner of Fifth
Avenue there were several people waiting for the uptown bus, and Stuart joined
them. Nobody noticed him, because he wasn’t tall enough to be noticed.

“I’m not tall enough to be
noticed,” thought Stuart, “yet I’m tall enough to want to go to Seventy-second
Street.”

When the bus came into view,
all the men waved their canes and brief cases at the driver, and Stuart waved
his spyglass. Then, knowing that the step of the bus would be too high for him,
Stuart seized hold of the cuff of a gentleman’s pants and was swung aboard
without any trouble or inconvenience whatever.

Stuart never paid any fare
on buses, because he wasn’t big enough to carry an ordinary dime. The only time
he had ever attempted to carry a dime, he had rolled the coin along like a hoop
while he raced along beside it; but it had got away from him on a hill and had
been snatched up by an old woman with no teeth. After that experience Stuart
contented himself with the tiny coins which his father made for him out of tin
foil. They were handsome little things, although rather hard to see without
putting on your spectacles.

When the conductor came
around to collect the fares, Stuart fished in his purse and pulled out a coin
no bigger than the eye of a grasshopper.

“What’s that you’re offering
me?” asked the conductor.

“It’s one of my dimes,” said
Stuart.

“Is it, now?” said the
conductor. “Well, I’d have a fine time explaining that to the bus company. Why,
you’re no bigger than a dime yourself.”

“Yes I am,” replied Stuart
angrily. “I’m more than twice as big as a dime. A dime only comes up to here
on me.” And Stuart pointed to his hip. “Furthermore,” he added, “I didn’t come
on this bus to be insulted.”

“I beg pardon,” said the
conductor. “You’ll have to forgive me, for I had no idea that in all the world
there was such a small sailor.”

“Live and learn,” muttered
Stuart, tartly, putting his change purse back in his pocket.

When the bus stopped at
Seventy-second

Street, Stuart jumped out and
hurried across to the sailboat pond in Central Park. Over the pond the west
wind blew, and into the teeth of the west wind sailed the sloops and schooners,
their rails well down, their wet decks gleaming. The owners, boys and grown
men, raced around the cement shores hoping to arrive at the other side in time
to keep the boats from bumping. Some of the toy boats were not as small as you
might think, for when you got close to them you found that their mainmast was
taller than a man’s head, and they were beautifully made, with everything
shipshape and ready for sea. To Stuart they seemed enormous, and he hoped he
would be able to get aboard one of them and sail away to the far corners of the
pond. (he was an adventurous little fellow and loved the feel of the breeze in
his face and the cry of the gulls overhead and the heave of the great swell
under him.)