Freddy and the Bean Home News Read online

  “Does all the iron we collect have to come just off this farm?” asked Mrs. Wiggins.

  “Yes,” said Freddy. “Or from up in the woods, where nobody else would be likely to claim it. Of course, if you find some on somebody else’s property, and the owner says you can have it, you can bring it in here.”

  “What I want to know,” said Bill, “is what’s it worth? Suppose I bring in ten pounds. How much’ll I get?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Freddy. “But it will be a little less than half a cent a pound.”

  Bill snorted. “Less than a nickel!” he said. “Rather stay at home and curl up with a good book.”

  Freddy rapped sharply on the dashboard. “Perhaps I have not made myself clear,” he said. “If we can make a little money by bringing in this old iron, why that’s fine. But we’re not doing it to make money. We’re doing it because it’s our patriotic duty, and if we didn’t get a cent for it, we’d do it just the same. Of course, we’d like to have our own farm win the prize, but that’s not so important either. All we want is to get that scrap out.”

  The animals gave a cheer at this, and Freddy continued. “As you know, our distinguished friend, that superb orator, Charles, was to have delivered a patriotic speech tonight. But though I am sorry to announce that illness has prevented his fulfilling the engagement, I am in a way glad that there is to be no patriotic speech. This is no time for patriotic speeches; it is a time for us to get to work. We’ve got a little over two months, until the first of June, and that isn’t any too long for what we have to do. So I suggest that as we have an hour or so of daylight left, we wind up this meeting by singing The Star Spangled Banner, and then get to work right now.”

  Up in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Bean heard the singing. Mr. Bean smiled, but he shook his head doubtfully. “Ought to be in bed,” he said, “instead of sitting up singing half the night.”

  “Now you leave them alone, Mr. B.,” Mrs. Bean replied. “It isn’t eight yet. And my land, you ought to be proud of ’em! No country can fail to win its wars when even the animals are patriotic!” And she stood up and sang the last of the national anthem with them. And pretty soon Mr. Bean stood up and sang too.

  The next morning Charles felt a good deal better, but he still had a cold all right. He hopped out of his box at five o’clock and tried to crow, but his voice was so hoarse that he didn’t even wake up Jinx. He could hear Mr. Bean snoring away upstairs. Of course Mr. Bean knew that he had a cold, and wouldn’t expect him to crow that morning, but he was a little ashamed of the way he had acted, and he thought if he could manage to wake everybody up in spite of having a cold, he would feel better about it.

  There was an iron frying pan hanging on the wall, and he hopped up on a chair where he could reach it and began hammering it with his beak. It rang as clear as an alarm bell. Jinx bounced out of his basket, and there was a thump upstairs and in a minute Mr. Bean came down into the kitchen. He had a candle in his hand, and he peered at Charles and then looked at the clock. “H’mph! Five o’clock. Right on the dot. But can’t ye crow?”

  Charles showed him what his crow sounded like.

  Mr. Bean nodded. “Guess your crow needs oilin’,” he said. He patted Charles on the head and went back upstairs.

  Pretty soon Mrs. Bean came down and shook down the fire and put the coffeepot on, and then she put some eggs and bacon on, and then she mixed up some pancake batter and put the griddle on to heat. And then she thought a minute and went and got some doughnuts and an apple pie and some baking powder biscuits and put them on the table. She never liked Mr. Bean to get up from the table hungry.

  Charles walked over to the outside door and tapped on it with his beak.

  “You want to go out?” said Mrs. Bean. “Well, your cold’s certainly better; I guess it won’t hurt you. But hop up on this chair first and let me look at your throat.”

  So Charles hopped up and opened his beak, and Mrs. Bean peered down his throat.

  “H’m,” she said, “looks pretty good. But if I were you, I wouldn’t try to crow for a few days. You might strain your voice. I’ll have Mr. Bean hang that frying pan up outside somewhere, and you can wake us up by rapping on that.”

  So she let Charles out, and the first animal he met in the barnyard was Alice, one of the ducks. “Why Charles,” she cried, “Emma and I were sorry to hear that you were ill. We missed you at the meeting last night. We always enjoy your speeches. So stimulating, we always think. But should you be out on such a raw day when you have a cold?”

  Charles said grandly that it was nothing, nothing; just a touch of the grip. (He called it “a dudge of the grib.”)

  “Dear me,” said Alice, “I do think you should be bundled up. Though I must say that you don’t look sick. With your fine ruddy color you’re the picture of health.” This of course was the rankest flattery, since a rooster’s face is covered with feathers and unless you pulled them all out you couldn’t tell what his complexion was like.

  But Charles never examined compliments very carefully. When anyone paid him a compliment, he just said: “Do you really think so?”, and of course they said it over again, so that then he got two compliments instead of one. And sometimes, by continuing to ask questions about it, he could get the compliment repeated seven or eight times. They made him feel that he was quite a rooster.

  He had intended to go back to the henhouse, for although when he was well Henrietta ordered him around a good deal, when he was sick she did everything she could to make him comfortable. But Alice’s compliments had made him feel so handsome and important that he decided to see if the other animals wouldn’t like to say a few admiring things.

  Unfortunately, the first one he met was Mrs. Wiggins. Like most cows, Mrs. Wiggins always said exactly what she meant. She seemed quite shocked at Charles’ appearance. “Good land!” she exclaimed. “You do look terrible, Charles. You ought to be in bed.”

  “But I—I’ve just got a little cold,” said Charles uncertainly, “I—I feel fine.”

  “Well, you don’t look it,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “What on earth Henrietta’s thinking of to let you go out, I can’t imagine. You look awful.”

  “Do-you really think so?” stammered Charles. The concern on Mrs. Wiggins’ broad face worried him. He did feel pretty awful, he thought. “Well,” he said, “maybe you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. You go straight home and gargle.”

  “I—I guess I’d better,” said Charles weakly. And he turned and walked unsteadily off towards the henhouse.

  Chapter 3

  Early that morning Freddy set out for Centerboro. He had written out an account of the meeting, and he was going to take it into Mr. Dimsey, the editor of the Centerboro Guardian. Mr. Dimsey was a good friend of Freddy’s, and often printed in the Guardian items of news about the Bean animals. He was really very glad to get these items, particularly in the winter, when there wasn’t much news to print, except about the church suppers, and old Mr. Lawrence’s lumbago, and things like that. He even printed some of Freddy’s poems.

  Of course since the famous trip to Florida, everybody in Centerboro knew about the Bean animals, and was interested in their doings, even if they didn’t know them personally. Freddy particularly was popular, and indeed was often invited to evening parties in the village. He seldom went, however, because although a good dancer and a fine conversationalist, he did not care for cards, and most of the parties were euchre parties.

  As he trotted down Main Street he was stopped a number of times by friends who wanted to know how he was getting on and if he had had any interesting detective cases lately. He climbed the narrow stairway to the printing office, pushed open the door marked “Editor,” and then stopped. For the man sitting at the cluttered desk was not his friend Mr. Dimsey; it was a stranger.

  Before Freddy could say anything the man got to his feet. He was a short, dark, thickset man with an angry expression. “Pigs!” he roared. “Jumping Jehosophat,
what next! Get out!”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Dimsey; I’m a friend of his,” said Freddy, backing up.

  “I’m not surprised,” said the man. “But that don’t make you a friend of mine. Come on; beat it.”

  “Well, I just wanted—” Freddy began, but the man picked up a ruler and started for him, and Freddy ran. He forgot that he was at the head of a flight of stairs, and so he ran right off the top step into the air. For a minute he hung there with all legs working, and then he went down and hit on the tenth step from the top and rolled all the way into the street.

  He ran right off the top step into the air.

  He picked himself up and brushed himself off. Fortunately he was pretty fat so it hadn’t hurt him much. All he said was: “Well!” And then he went off out Elm Street, to the little farmhouse where Mr. Dimsey lived, and rang the doorbell. And Mr. Dimsey himself came to the door. “Well, well, Freddy,” he said. “Nice to know my old friends haven’t forgotten me. Come in.”

  Mr. Dimsey was a nice man, but it is hard to describe him. I guess it is because he wasn’t very important looking. Even his friends sometimes passed him on the street without recognizing him. It is easier to say what he wasn’t. He wasn’t tall, and he wasn’t fat. He didn’t have any special kind of expression. I think he had a little gray moustache, but you had to be pretty close to him to see it. But Freddy liked him a lot.

  “I went around to the Guardian office,” said Freddy, wiping his trotters carefully on the mat, “but there was a man there—”

  “Mr. Garble,” said Mr. Dimsey. “He doesn’t like animals.” He led the way into his parlor, and pulled up an armchair before the fire for Freddy. The armchair was upholstered in horsehair, which is pretty slippery. Freddy sat down in it, and promptly slid off onto the floor.

  “Well, what is Mr. Garble doing in your office?” said Freddy. He got into the armchair more carefully this time and wriggled himself well back into it. But the minute he let go of the arms, he slid off onto the floor again. “I guess I’d better stay here,” he said.

  “Nobody with short legs can stay in a horsehair chair,” said Mr. Dimsey. “I’m sorry, but all the others are the same. You stay there and I’ll come down with you.” So he got down on the floor beside Freddy. He was a very polite man.

  Then he told Freddy that he wasn’t editor of the Centerboro Guardian any more. “Mr. Garble is running the paper now,” he said. “He’s a mean man, Freddy. If that’s another poem you’ve brought, you might as well tear it up. He doesn’t like animals and he doesn’t like poetry. I don’t know anything he does like. He doesn’t even like himself very well.”

  “He must like being an editor,” said Freddy. “But why did you let him?”

  “I couldn’t help myself,” said Mr. Dimsey. “You see, Freddy, he’s Mrs. Humphrey Underdunk’s brother. You know her?”

  Freddy didn’t know Mrs. Underdunk personally, but he knew a lot about her. She had a big house that looked like a castle out Main Street, with an iron deer on the front lawn, and she was very rich, and she liked to run things.

  “Well,” said Mr. Dimsey, “some years ago the old press that we used to print the Guardian on broke down. I had to get a new one, and I didn’t have the money for it myself, so I went to Mrs. Underdunk to see if I could borrow it. At first she wouldn’t have anything to do with it, but then she talked to her brother, and at last she agreed to lend the money. She drove a hard bargain, but I figured if things went well, I’d be able to pay her back in a few years. I suppose I ought to have seen what she was up to, but I didn’t.

  “Well, things didn’t go well. Instead of paying her back, each year I owed her a little more, and before long she had a mortgage on my whole plant. And then she began telling me what I should print in the Guardian.

  “Well, most of the things she wanted printed didn’t matter so much. They were mostly about parties she gave and what important people were there, or about how generous she was to give a new organ to the church, and so on. But when she wanted to sell the town a piece of her land to build the new school on, and wanted me to say it was the best place to build on, I wouldn’t do it. The town had an offer of two other sites that were cheaper and better in every way.

  “Well, I owed her so much money that she could have taken the Guardian away from me then if she’d wanted to. But she knew it wouldn’t look well if people knew why she had done it, and she had to wait for a better excuse. And pretty soon she found one.”

  Mr. Dimsey stopped. “H’m,” he said, “I don’t know as I ought to tell you what it was. It may make you kind of mad. It did me. But as long as I’ve started—” He got up and went over to his desk and brought out a copy of the Guardian. “You remember the picture of you I printed last fall? When you had your birthday party?” He spread out the paper, but Freddy did not need to see it to remember it. He had the clipping pinned up over his desk at home. It wasn’t a very good likeness, but newspaper pictures never are. I guess that is why they always have the person’s name under them. Under Freddy’s, it said: “Prominent Pig Fêted,” and went on to tell about the party and the many attractive and tastefully wrapped presents, and the cake Mrs. Bean had made for him, and a short sketch of his career. It was a nice piece and had pleased Freddy very much.

  But it had not pleased Mrs. Underdunk. For on the day of Freddy’s party, she had had lunch at the Governor’s mansion in Albany, and there was a story about that, with her picture, in the very next column. Maybe she wouldn’t have thought much about the two pictures being together if it hadn’t been for old Mr. Lawrence. Old Mr. Lawrence didn’t see very well, and when she showed him the piece in the paper he looked at the wrong picture. “Fine likeness,” he wheezed. “For the first time I see a look of your father in your face.” The story went all over town, and several people who didn’t like Mrs. Underdunk very well, called up and wished her many happy returns of the day. One or two even asked her which was her picture.

  “She was pretty mad,” said Mr. Dimsey. “She came in the office and just about tore the place to pieces. She said I’d made her the laughing stock of the town, putting her picture side by side with a pig’s—I hope you won’t be offended by my telling you this, Freddy,” he said. “Personally, you’re a friend of mine, and I’d be proud to have my picture beside yours any time, and so would a lot of other people.”

  “Don’t give it a thought,” said Freddy. “The way I look at it, it’s mostly a question of ears and noses. You put my ears and nose on you, and you could hear folks laugh from here to Buffalo. But put your nose and ears on me, and you could hear ’em in Detroit. A pig has one kind of good looks and a man has another, and you can’t mix ’em up.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Mr. Dimsey. “If anybody told you you looked like me, you’d be mad. It isn’t that I’m so terrible looking; it’s that you’d know you looked queer. Well, to make a long story short, Mrs. Underdunk demanded payment of her loan, and as I couldn’t pay, I had to get out. She took the Guardian and put her brother in as editor. And now she can put anything she wants to in the paper.”

  Freddy thought that was terrible, and said so.

  “Well, there won’t be any more news of the Bean animals in the Guardian,” said Mr. Dimsey. “You can bet on that. I’m kind of sorry, too. It brightened up the paper a lot. You and Jinx and Mrs. Wiggins and the rest of you have got a lot of friends in this town, and they were always interested in your doings. As for myself, while I miss running the paper, I’m kind of glad to have time to sit on my front porch and just rock. ’Tisn’t very exciting, but it’s nice and peaceful.”

  “Well, I think it’s a shame,” said Freddy. “I wish there was something we could do to get the paper back for you.”

  “I know you do, Freddy,” said Mr. Dimsey. “But there’s nothing anybody can do. Fortunately I can get part of my living off this farm, and I’ve got a little hand press left, and I’ve set that up in my cellar. I’m getting some printing work—just small jobs.
If you ever want any of your poems printed up—”

  “Say!” interrupted Freddy. “That gives me an idea. Why couldn’t I get out a newspaper myself? Just for the animals on the farm. I’ve taught most all of them to read, you know, and when you had pieces about them in the Guardian, they all wanted to read them. I’m sure they’d read a paper printed just for them.”

  Mr. Dimsey thought this was a good idea. But he pointed out that paper and ink cost money. “I’d be glad to help you with it for nothing,” he said. “Set the type and print it. But—”

  “I wouldn’t think of asking you to do that,” said Freddy. “It’s true, most of the animals haven’t got money to pay for subscriptions with. But they could work it out. Hank, for instance, could give a day’s work on your farm for a subscription, and Jinx and the dogs could chase rabbits out of the garden, and so on.”

  “Maybe Mr. Bean wouldn’t like that arrangement,” said Mr. Dimsey.

  “Oh, he doesn’t care what we do with our spare time,” said Freddy. “No, the more I think of it, the more I think it’s a great idea.”

  “I think it is myself,” said Mr. Dimsey, getting up off the floor. “Come down cellar and I’ll show you the printing press.”

  So that was the beginning of the Bean Home News, which was destined to become something of a power in the county.

  Chapter 4

  Freddy said nothing to the other animals about his scheme. He locked himself in the pigpen and pounded his old typewriter for two days, and on the third, he took what he had written in to Centerboro, and he and Mr. Dimsey spent the day setting it up in type and printing it. And on Saturday morning at five o’clock, when Charles banged on the iron frying pan which Mr. Bean had hung up for him on the back porch, Freddy was beside him with a sheaf of freshly printed papers.