Freddy Goes to Florida (4 page)

The animals were all glad to have Charles and Henrietta with them, and they went on for a way, and camped that night under a big oak-tree by the road-side. For a time they sat about and told stories and jokes and made plans for the future, but they were all tired, and one by one they dropped off to sleep. Before Charles's eyes closed, he looked drowsily up at the starry sky above him, and at the long, mysterious, white road by which they had camped.

“What a wonderful time we're going to have,” he muttered sleepily. “This is the first time since I was a chick that I haven't had to worry about getting up in the morning.

“
Oh, the winding road is long, is long
,

But never too long for me
.

And we'll cheer each mile
…
mile'th song
…
song
.…”

His voice trailed off into silence, and he was sound asleep.

V

At the first glimmer of daylight next morning Charles awoke. He stretched his wings, flapped them a couple of times, and then, before he knew what he was doing, gave a loud crow.

He had perched on a limb of the oak-tree, and just under him Hank was standing, fast asleep. Horses can sleep standing up as well as lying down, because they have four legs and don't fall over, and Hank had gone to sleep that way because the grass was wet with dew, and he thought if he lay down in it, it would be bad for his rheumatism. When Charles crowed, Hank opened his eyes.

“Goodness!” he said. “You startled me! I thought you were not going to crow this morning. You said you were going to sleep till ten o'clock.”

Charles looked foolish. “I suppose,” he said, “that I've got so in the habit of getting up early and crowing that I do it without thinking.”

“Well, in that case,” said Hank, “I don't see why you complain so much about it. If you do it without thinking about it, it's just like breathing, and nobody ever complains about having to breathe.”

“No,” said Charles, “that's gospel truth!”

“I expect,” said Hank, “that you've complained about it for so long that you do that without thinking, too.”

This was a little hard for Charles to understand, but he thought about it for a while. And then he said: “You're right, Hank. I never realized it before. I don't really mind getting up and crowing a bit, now I come to really think of it. But,” he added in a whisper, “don't tell Henrietta I said so.”

By the time the sun was up the animals were all up too, and getting their breakfast. Hank and Mrs. Wiggins ate the long, juicy grass that grew beside the road, and Freddy ate the acorns that had fallen from the oak-tree, and Charles and Henrietta and the mice ate beechnuts from a beech-tree near by. Charles and Henrietta ate the nuts whole, but the mice held them in their forepaws and stripped off the husks with their sharp little teeth and ate the sweet kernels. And Mrs. Wiggins gave the dog and cat some milk, and the spiders sat up between Mrs. Wiggins's horns, where they had spun their web, and caught flies for breakfast.

They all breakfasted well but Alice and Emma. Ducks like to eat the juicy weeds and things that they find in the mud at the bottom of ponds, but of course there wasn't any pond handy, so Alice and Emma ate a few beechnuts that the mice shelled for them, and said that they would wait for the rest of their breakfast until they came to the river.

It was not until early in the afternoon that they came down a long hill into another valley and found the wide, swift river that the robin had marked on the map. Here they sat down and rested while the ducks dived for their meal in the shallow water under the bank.

Mrs. Wiggins was very much interested in the diving. “I do wish I could do that,” she said. “Just think how exciting it must be to be down among the fishes and see all the queer things that grow on the bottom, and look up at the sky through the green water!” She had been leaning over the edge as she talked, and all of a sudden the bank gave way, and down she went into the water with a terrible splash, and there she was, sitting in the river with the water up to her neck.

The animals all rushed to help pull her out, but they could do nothing for her, for she was quite helpless with laughter. She laughed and laughed. “Here I am,” she said, “down among the fishes where I wanted to be. Nothing like having your wishes come true.”

“
Here I am,” she said, “down among the fishes
.”

But suddenly she stopped laughing. “Goodness me!” she exclaimed. “Where are Mr. and Mrs. Webb? They were sitting on my head when I fell in.”

She clambered hurriedly up the bank, and then they all searched the bushes along the shore for a long distance down-stream. But the spiders were nowhere to be found.

“Well,” said Mrs. Wiggins at last, “I guess they're gone. They won't drown—that's a comfort. They'll float down and land somewhere, but the current is pretty swift, and they may go miles before they can get ashore. I don't suppose we'll ever see them again. I hope this will be a lesson to me—cutting up silly didos on the bank like a two-weeks-old calf!” She was very angry with herself.

The animals all agreed, however, that it wasn't her fault, and pretty soon they started on again. They followed the river for some time, and by and by saw the white houses of the village and the high arches of the bridge ahead of them.

“I vote we wait till after dark to go through the village,” said Robert. “Those people are sure to chase us or try to lock us up or something, if they see us.”

This seemed a sensible plan, so they sat down by the river to wait. Pretty soon they heard a rattling and a puffing coming along the road, and then an automobile came into sight, and in it were the man with the black moustache and the boy with the dirty face. And behind it ran a black dog, twice as big as Robert and three times as fierce-looking.

As soon as the man saw the animals he stopped the machine. “Now we've got 'em, sonny,” he said. “Here, Jack,” he called to the dog. “Sick 'em, Jack! Go after 'em. Chew 'em up!”

The dog growled and bounded across the road, but Mrs. Wiggins lowered her horns and shook them threateningly, and Robert barked, and the cat arched his back and spat, and even Freddy squealed angrily. And the dog stopped.

“You'd better not bother us,” said Mrs. Wiggins.

“I don't want to,” said the dog. “I haven't got anything against you. But he'll beat me if I don't.”

“What do you stay with him for if he beats you?” asked Robert.

“Where could I go if I didn't stay with him?” asked the dog.

“Come along with us,” said Robert, and he told him where they were going.

“That's fine!” said the dog, and he walked toward them, wagging his tail.

“Hey, Jack!” called the man angrily. “What's the matter with you, you useless, good-for-nothing cur? I'll beat you within an inch of your life!” And he picked up a stick and started after the dog.

But now that Jack had found some new friends, he wasn't afraid of his cruel master any more. He turned with a growl, and before the man could lift the stick, he was flat on his back on the road with Jack's forepaws on his chest.

Then the man changed his tune. “Good Jack! Good old boy!” he said. “Let me up, that's a good dog.” But Jack did not move, and the other animals came and sat in a ring around the man, and the boy jumped out of the automobile and ran away across the fields yelling, just as he had done before. I don't know that I blame him.

After a while, when they thought they had scared the man enough, they let him up, and he walked over to the automobile without a word and got in it and drove off. Then Jack told them that he had lived with the man for five years, and that it had indeed been a terrible life, for the man hardly gave him anything to eat, and he beat him nearly every day.

“I guess Mr. Bean is a pretty good master after all,” said Hank. “At least he never beats us, and if some things aren't just as we should like to have them, it's because he's poor and can't afford to have them better.”

“You don't happen to have a bone about you, do you?” asked Robert. “I haven't had a good gnaw since I left home.”

“The farm where I have been living is just a little way back along this road,” said Jack, “and I buried two good bones in the orchard yesterday. If you'll come with me, we'll get them. Can you spare the time?”

“There's plenty of time,” said Robert, “because we can't start on until after dark.” So the two dogs raced off together to get the bones.

All this time Mr. and Mrs. Webb had been floating peacefully down-stream on the swift current of the river. Spiders can float, because they are very light. But they can't move round much on the water, because it is so slippery under their feet, and for every step they take in one direction they slide two in another. So Mr. and Mrs. Webb just sat still and sailed along and admired the changing scenery of the banks.

“I don't know why anyone should want a private yacht when they can travel like this,” said Mr. Webb. “It's delightful. Though I must say I am sorry to miss the trip to Florida.”

“No use crying over spilt milk,” said his wife. “Or spilt spiders either, and that's what we are. We'll never see
those
animals again. Even if we could get over to the bank and climb up to the road before they came along, they'd go right by without either seeing or hearing us.”

“But,” said Mr. Webb, “they spoke of crossing a bridge further down the river. If we got to that before they did, we could try to make them see us, anyway.”

“Now, that's an idea,” exclaimed his wife. “You've got a head on you, Webb. I always knew you did have, in spite of what my father said about you before we were married.”

“I know what he said well enough without your repeating it every five minutes,” grumbled Mr. Webb. “He said I didn't have gumption enough to catch a lame fly without wings. That's what you're thinking about, I suppose.”

“No,” said Mrs. Webb, “I was thinking about the time he said you'd never be hanged for your beauty, and you ought to——”

“That's enough,” said Mr. Webb crossly. “You'd be better occupied thinking about what we're going to do when we get to the bridge than raking up all those old things. There it is just ahead of us.”

So Mrs. Webb stopped talking, and they began to think up a plan, and by the time they were almost to the bridge, they had decided what they would do.

The current bore them swiftly down toward one of the arches, but under the arch some dead branches were sticking up through the water, and they caught hold of these and climbed up over them to the bridge.

“They haven't come by yet,” said Mr. Webb, after they had examined all the footprints of animals that were plainly marked in the dust on the floor of the bridge. “There have been some horses and dogs along here to-day, but no cows or pigs or cats or ducks.”

So they both climbed up to the iron beam on one side of the bridge, and each of them fastened the end of a thread to the beam, and then they dropped down, spinning out the thread as they went, and carried it across the bridge and fastened the other end to the iron beam on the other side. They did this several times, until they had a bridge of threads, strong enough to hold them both, right across the roadway and about ten feet above it. Then they walked out to the middle of it and waited.

Of course they did not know that the animals had decided to wait until after dark to cross the bridge, and by the time the sun had gone down and the stars had begun to wink out, and lights to twinkle in the houses, they commenced to be worried. But there was nothing to do but wait, and at last they heard the shuffle and patter of many paws and hoofs, and the animals came down the road and on to the bridge. They were walking as quietly as possible, so that the people in the houses would not hear them, but spiders can see in the dark, and when Mrs. Wiggins's nose was just under them, they each slid spinning down a thread and landed on it.

Mrs. Wiggins gave a tremendous sneeze that nearly blew them off, for they had tickled her nose dreadfully, but they hung on tight.

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Wiggins. “I do hope I'm not getting a cold, being out so late in the night air!”

But Mr. Webb had crawled up close to her ear, and he said: “It's us, Mrs. Wiggins—the Webbs. We waited for you on the bridge.”

Then Mrs. Wiggins told the other animals what had happened, and they were so glad that they gave a loud cheer, and they all said how happy they were to have the Webbs with them again, and how clever the spiders were to have thought of such a good scheme. And all the villagers came to their doors and looked out to see what the noise was, but by this time the travellers were across the bridge and didn't care.

That night they camped in a deserted barn, and it was lucky they did, for toward morning a heavy shower came up. But the roof was still good, and though most of them woke up when the rain started, they were dry and warm, and soon they went back to sleep again with the pleasantest sound in the world in their ears—the soft drumming of rain on shingles.