The Mouse Family Robinson (6 page)

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Authors: Dick King-Smith

BOOK: The Mouse Family Robinson
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In fact, the Robinson family and their friend Mr. Brown never did get to live in the Mousery at number 16. To be sure, they came up from the cellar whenever they heard the sound of Bill's voice as he talked to his pet mice. They knew he would always give them something to eat.
Beaumont was the first of them who actually took food from the giant's hand, but the others soon did too.
I wanted to tame a wild mouse
, thought Bill,
and now it looks as though I've tamed nine! And I daresay there'll be more before long. I must make a proper home for them.
So one day, when the Robinsons and Mr. Brown came up from the cellar, they found a large shallow box on the floor of the Mousery. Bill had put bedding in it, over which he had scattered a lot of canary seed, and by the time John Robinson and his family and his old friend had eaten it all, they felt quite at home.
So that when Janet said, “Well, I suppose we'd better get back down to the cellar,” John said, “Why?”
“It is very comfortable here, Janet,” said Mr. Brown.
“Come on, Mom, let's stay,” said Beaumont.
“Yes, let's!” chorused Ambrose and Camilla and Desdemona and Eustace and Felicity.
So they did. But not for long, because soon two things happened. First, the rapidly growing mousekins decided that living with the pet mice was a bit boring, so they went back to the cellar where they could play with their wild friends. Only Beaumont stayed. He liked being with his
friend the giant, and he was interested in getting to know the pet mice. He talked politely to them, and some of them responded in quite a friendly way.
The second thing to happen was that Janet had another lot of babies—nine this time: six boys and three girls.
Gilbert, Hermione, Inigo, Julius, Kingsley, Lindsay, Marmaduke, Niobe, and Olivia.
“Only eleven to go, John,” said his old friend, out of Janet's hearing.
“What d'you mean, Mr. Brown?” John asked.
“Eleven more and you'll have finished your first alphabet of names.”
“Gosh!” said John, and “Gosh!” echoed Beaumont.
“I only hope,” said Mr. Brown, “that I'm still around to see the alphabet completed.”
“Why wouldn't you be, Uncle Brown?” asked Beaumont.
“Well, I'm not as young as I was.”
“You'll go on for a while yet, Mr. Brown,” said John.
But he was wrong.
One morning a few days later, Bill woke up and went into the Mousery to look at what he thought of as his “tame wild mice.” There were
two boxes on the floor now, for Bill had supplied a small one as a single room for the mouse he thought of as “Granddad.”
In the big box Bill could see Janet suckling her newborn nine, watched by John and Beaumont. In the small box Granddad lay comfortably, having breakfast in bed. Not wanting to disturb anyone, Bill tiptoed away.
Mr. Brown spent a lot of his time asleep, but he still had some appetite, and John and Beaumont brought him choice bits of food.
As they had been collecting it that morning, Beaumont said, “You always call Uncle Brown ‘Mr. Brown,' don't you, Dad? Why don't you use his first name?”
“I don't know it.”
“Can't you ask him?”
“I don't want to. He'd have told me if he'd wanted to.”
I'll ask him
, thought Beaumont.
I'm sure he wouldn't mind. He's nice, Uncle Brown is. He'll tell me his first name.
“Uncle Brown,” said Beaumont, climbing into the small box that afternoon. “Will you tell me what your first name is? I'd like to know.”
The old mouse did not reply.
He has gotten a bit deaf lately
, thought Beaumont, and more loudly he said, “Uncle Brown! Can you hear me?”
But there was no answer.
With his nose Beaumont touched the body of the old mouse. It was stone cold.
Just then Bill came into the Mousery with some bits of cookie that he'd saved as a treat for his tame wild mice. He saw that one of the youngsters was in Granddad's box. It looked up at him and squeaked.
“He's dead!” cried Beaumont. “Look, giant, Uncle Brown is dead!”
Oh dear
, thought Bill as he stood and stared down.
Poor old Granddad.
All up and down, in both the even- and the odd-numbered houses in Simple Street, mice were being born. Mice were dying, too, in the jaws of cats or traps, or of poisoning, or simply—like Mr. Brown—of old age. But never before had a mouse been given such a funeral as Mr. Brown was.
“One thing I do know,” said Bill Black as he fed his fancy mice, “and that is, I'm not just going to chuck poor old Granddad in the trash. He shall have a proper burial in the garden.”
Heaven only knows how Beaumont knew what was going on in the brain of his friend the young giant, but the fact remains that when Bill had dug a hole, he suddenly realized that there were seven little mourners at the graveside. Only Janet could not come out to pay her last respects.
“I can't leave the babies unprotected. Mr. Brown wouldn't have wanted me to,” she said to John.
But when Bill had carefully put the body in the grave, John and Ambrose and Beaumont and Camilla and Desdemona and Eustace and Felicity all crept to the edge for a last look at their old friend—“Uncle” to the young ones, “Mister” always to John and Janet, and, had they known it, “Granddad” to the giant who was shoveling the earth back over him.
That night Bill cleaned out the small box on the floor of the Mousery but left it where it was.
It'll do for a spare room
, he thought.
When these nine new mousekins get too boisterous, their parents can get some peace in it.
Time passed, and at number 16, Gilbert, Hermione, Inigo, Julius, Kingsley, Lindsay, Marmaduke, Niobe, and Olivia went down to join their older brothers and sisters in all the fun
and games that went on in the cellar. John came out of the spare room and settled himself comfortably beside Janet in the big box.
“D'you think we'll have any more babies, dear?” he asked her.
“I wouldn't be at all surprised,” she replied.
The one member of the family who was different from the rest—as he always had been—was Beaumont. Once his father had left the spare room, he took it over so he could be near his new friends
Because he had grown so close to the young giant, Beaumont had seen a good deal of the fancy mice. He would go up and down the cages on the low tables in the Mousery and chat with them through the bars—the pink-eyed whites, the black-eyed whites, the chocolates, the fawns, the plum-colored mice, and the Dutch mice. Most were civil to him (even the bad-tempered pink-eyed buck), and, though he did not know it, quite a few of the young does rather fancied this friendly, talkative young buck.
Bill noticed that his tame pet house mouse spent a lot of time looking and squeaking at one very pretty plum-colored doe. He offered a bit of food to Beaumont, who climbed onto the palm of the giant's hand as usual, and then he popped him into an empty cage and, catching the pretty plum-colored doe, put her in too.
One morning, Bill woke to the sound of much squeaking from the big box on the Mousery floor.
“I want to be alone, John,” Janet was saying. “Go away, please.”
“Why?”
“I'm going to have some more babies.”
“Gosh!” said John.
Don't have more than eleven
, he thought,
because then we'll reach the end of the alphabet, like Mr. Brown said. How on earth will I think of names
beginning with X or Z? I'll ask Beaumont, he might know.
But there was no sign of his son.
John climbed up and went along the tables,
looking into each cage. In the last cage of all was a pretty little fancy doe, a plum-colored one, but she was not alone.
“Beaumont!” cried John. “What are you doing in that cage?”

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