Stuart Little by E. B. White, Garth Williams Page B

took Stuart’s temperature and found that it was 98.6, which is normal for a
mouse. He also examined Stuart’s chest and heart and looked into his ears
solemnly with a flashlight. (not every doctor can look into a mouse’s ear
without laughing.) Everything seemed to be all right, and Mrs. Little was
pleased to get such a good report.
    “Feed him up!” said the
doctor cheerfully, as he left.
    The home of the Little
family was a pleasant place near a park in New York City. In the mornings the
sun streamed in through the east windows, and all the Littles were up early as
a general rule. Stuart was a great help to his parents, and to his older
brother George, because of his small size and because he could do things that a
mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them. One day when Mrs. Little was
washing out the bathtub after Mr. Little had taken a bath, she lost a ring off
her finger and was horrified to discover that it had fallen down the drain.
    “What had I better do?” she
cried, trying to keep the tears back.
    “If I were you,” said
George, “I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook and tie it onto a
piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it.” So Mrs. Little found a
piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour she fished for the ring;
but it was dark down the drain and the hook always seemed to catch on something
before she could get it down to where the ring was.
    “What luck?” inquired Mr.
Little, coming into the bathroom.
    “No luck at all,” said Mrs.
Little. “The ring is so far down I can’t fish it up.”
    “Why don’t we send Stuart
down after it?” suggested Mr. Little. “How about it, Stuart, would you like to
try.”
    “Yes, I would,” Stuart
replied, “but I think I’d better get into my old pants. I imagine it’s wet down
there.”
    “It’s all of that,” said
George, who was a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn’t worked. So Stuart
slipped into his old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He
decided to carry the string along with him, leaving one end in charge of his
father. “When I jerk three times on the string, pull me up,” he said. And while
Mr. Little knelt in the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to
view. In a minute or so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr.
Little carefully hauled it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring
safely around his neck.
    “Oh, my brave little son,”
said Mrs. Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him.
    “How was it down there?”
asked Mr. Little, who was always curious to know about places he had never been
to.
    “It was all right,” said
Stuart.
    But the truth was the drain
had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle
himself with a bit of his mother’s violet water before he felt himself again.
Everybody in the family thought he had been awfully good about the whole thing.
    II. Home Problems
    Stuart was also helpful when
it came to Ping-pong. The Littles liked Ping-pong, but the balls had a way of
rolling under chairs, sofas, and radiators, and this meant that the players were
forever stooping down and reaching under things. Stuart soon learned to chase
balls, and it was a great sight to see him come out from under a hot radiator, pushing
a Ping-pong ball with all his might, the perspiration rolling down his cheeks.
The ball, of course, was almost as high as he was, and he had to throw his
whole weight against it in order to keep it rolling.
    The Littles had a grand
piano in their living room, which was all right except that one of the keys was
a sticky key and didn’t work properly. Mrs. Little said she thought it must be
the damp weather, but I don’t see how it could be the damp weather, for the key
had been sticking for about four years, during which time there had been many
bright clear days. But anyway, the key stuck, and was a great inconvenience to
anyone trying to play the