The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

Let Uncle Freddie get on with the story.’ And Violet insisted, ‘And you are the tiger, Freddie. I just know you are.’ Her bright beseeching eyes
were too much for him. He would go back to being the tiger, which, after all, was true. But when it came to the snake part of his tale, he did not want to tell of his uncourageous retreat, and so
he made it a braver story. ‘It came nearer and nearer, rearing up and making its black head wide – like a great hood – and hissing horribly. But I stood my ground. I said,
“If you come any nearer, I will smite you with my mighty paw, and you will be dead and your eggs will have nobody to look after them when your children come out of them.” And the snake
went back into the cave to her eggs.’
    ‘And then what?’
    ‘I left her. In peace.’
    ‘Did each of the eggs have a wicked snake inside?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Didn’t you wait to see them all come out?’
    ‘I had more important things to do.’
    ‘Oh, Freddie, you are so brave!’
    There was a chorus of agreement.
    Freddie’s mother interrupted. ‘Time for your suppers and bed.’ To Freddie, she said, ‘Well, at least you kept them quiet with your nonsense.’
    A moment later she added, ‘It’s dark enough now; you’d better join your cousins foraging – do something useful for a change.’
    Freddie simply could not understand why she was being so horrible to him. He looked around the dim den, crowded as usual and enlivened with the sound of twenty mice chewing apple peel, and made
off down the main mouse-made passage that ended in the kitchen of one of the apartments in the building. The people who lived in the ground-floor flat were not at all tidy and did not do very much
cleaning. This was an ideal situation for Freddie’s family. Things got dropped on the floor, left on the table, kept in flimsy paper bags that were easy to chew through. Plates were seldom
washed up, and often contained delicious snacks like scrambled egg, bacon rind, sometimes even bits of toast with melted cheese on them. Cornflakes and crumbs were all over the place. The only
danger was that the people who lived there often turned up to make themselves something to eat. Then the foragers had to hide and keep very quiet until the person or people had gone. Luckily the
people hated cats, and the horrible cat from next door had stopped trying to get in after he had been drenched by a boy with a water pistol. Freddie’s Uncle Herbert, who had seen this, said
he laughed so much that even his whiskers ached, and he told the story so often that the family got bored of it.
And they’ll get bored of my stories as well
, he thought. It was the
custom for the foragers to eat on the spot before they carted stuff home for the others. Freddie wasn’t very hungry after his huge morning meal, but he nibbled on some cake crumbs while he
watched his cousin Horatio, a rather bossy athletic mouse who had managed to get onto the kitchen table, where he had found a half-eaten packet of crisps and a saucer with some peanuts. These he
was pushing one by one over the edge of the table, ordering each of the others to take one of them home. Some of the peanuts had split and this made them easy to carry by mouth, but the whole ones
were too big and had to be rolled along the floor. Freddie noticed a rather shy mouse trying to take a whole nut in her mouth. Horatio was shouting at her. She was shaking with fright and then
suddenly the nut split in two. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Horatio roared. She burst into tears.
    Freddie flew to her aid. ‘Shut up, you bully!’ he squeaked with rage. ‘Nuts do split. It wasn’t your fault,’ he said to the poor mouse. ‘Please cheer
up.’ He really couldn’t bear to see her crying. He offered his tail to mop her tears and she accepted; he noticed that the round tops of her ears and her nose had gone a much darker
pink.
    ‘We could each take half the nut,’ he said, and she nodded