Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Read Online Free PDF Page A

Fitzgibbon turned the tractor's engine off. It died with a splutter, and they all gathered around the plough-hitch.
    'Sure enough,' said Mr Fitzgibbon. 'She's just about ready to shear. Paul, I'm glad you remembered that. If I order it today, Henderson's will have a new one in three or four days.'
    'It took five days last time,' Paul said.
    'Five, then. That's just about right anyway. It's too wet to plough now, but five days like this ought to dry the ground out. Let's grease up while we've got it out. Billy, get the grease gun.'
    In her hiding place Mrs Frisby breathed a sigh of relief, and then began to worry again immediately. Five days, although a respite, was too short. Three weeks, Mr Ages had said, would be the soonest Timothy could get out of bed, the soonest he could live through a chill night without getting pneumonia again. She sighed and felt like weeping. If only the summer house were as warm as the cement block house. But it was not, and even if it were, he could not make the long journey. They might try to carry him -but what was the use of that? Only to have him sick again after the first night there.
    She might, she thought, go back to Mr Ages and see if he had any ideas that would help. Was there some medicine that would make Timothy get strong sooner?
    She doubted it; surely, if he had such medicine he would have given it to her the first time. She was thinking about this when she climbed out through the knot hole and slithered to the ground below - not ten feet from the cat.
    Dragon lay stretched out in the sunlight, but he was not asleep. His head was up and his yellow eyes were open, staring in her direction. She gasped in terror and whirled around the fence post to put it between her and him. Then, without pausing, she set out on a dash across the garden as fast as she could run, expecting at any instant to hear the cat's scream and feel his great claws on her back. She reached the shrew's hole and considered for a fraction of a second diving into it, but it was too small.
    Then she glanced back over her shoulder and saw an amazing sight. The cat had not moved at all! He was lying exactly as before, except that now one of his eyes was closed. The other, however, was still looking straight at her, so she did not pause, but raced on.
    Finally, when she was a safe distance away - two-thirds across the garden and nearly home - she stopped and looked again more carefully. The cat still lay there and seemed to have gone to sleep. That was so odd - so unheard of - she could hardly believe it. Feeling quite safe, but puzzled, she looked for a vantage point from which she could see better. By rights, she should be dead, and though she had escaped by what seemed almost a miracle, she scolded herself for having been so careless. If the cat had killed her, who would take care of the children?
    She saw a dead asparagus plant, stiff, tall, with branches like a small tree. She climbed it and from near the top looked back to the farmyard. Mr Fitzgibbon and his sons had finished greasing the tractor and gone on somewhere else. But the cat still lay on the grass, seemingly asleep. Why had he not chased her? Was it possible that, close as she had been, he had not seen her? She could not believe that. The only explanation she could think of was that he had just finished a very large meal and was feeling so stuffed and lazy he did not want to take the trouble to get up. But that was almost as unbelievable; certainly it had never happened before. Was it possible that he was sick?
    Then, on what had already been a day of oddities and alarms, she noticed something else strange. Beyond the cat, quite far beyond, between the barn and the house, she saw what looked like a troop of dark grey figures marching in columns. Marching? Not exactly, but moving slowly and all in line.
    They were rats.
    There were a dozen of them, and at first she could not quite see what they were up to. Then she saw something moving between them and