Read Online Freddy the Pied Piper by Walter R. Brooks - Free Book Online Page A

Guffin snapped.
    Freddy wasn’t going to get into an argument. He walked around the room and tried several locked doors, but at last came to one which opened on a sort of pantry. There were shelves of dishes and supplies, and one small window, very high up. Freddy doubted if Mrs. Guffin could reach it; she certainly couldn’t climb out of it. He took a chair in, and then told her to go in and sit on it.
    She protested bitterly, but there wasn’t much she could do. “You’re just getting a dose of your own medicine,” Freddy said. “How do you suppose those chickadees you trapped, like being shut up in cages?” They pushed her in and shut the door and locked it.
    â€œWell,” said Leo, “it’s good of you, Freddy, to take all this trouble for me, but what good is it? I had a pretty tough time before I got here. After the snow began, and people began to notice my tracks, word got around that there was a lion roaming around the countryside, and I’ll bet there were fifty hunters looking for me. I didn’t leave tracks on the roads, but I couldn’t travel on the roads because they could see me for miles against the snow. And at night the cars picked me up in their headlights. If I’d had any sense I’d have turned back south and waited for spring, but I don’t know, I guess I’m sort of pigheaded … oh, gosh, excuse me, Freddy.”
    â€œThink nothing of it,” said Freddy generously. “I don’t know why it’s so awful to call anybody pig-headed. Pigs—well, they’re firm, they’re determined, they don’t just give up weakly when things go against them. If that’s being pig-headed, then I’m glad I’m a pig.”
    Leo said: “Yeah. Well, you bear up under it well.” He went on with his story. “I got up here to Tallmanville just before Christmas. The hunters were beginning to close in on me; they had me cornered in a little patch of woods just north of town. I knew I’d have to run for it, so I gave a couple of good loud roars up on the north edge of the woods, and then streaked it right down into the town. It was early morning; there wasn’t anybody much around; and as I came down this street I saw this Mrs. Guffin shoveling a path around to her side door. She’d left her front door ajar and she had her back to me.
    â€œWell, I didn’t have any plan, but here was a place maybe I could hide. I was inside in two jumps, and I hadn’t left any tracks on the clean sidewalk. I smelt food, and I came out here in the diningroom and ate up a loaf of bread and part of a pound of butter and some other things she had left over from breakfast. Then I heard her come in, and I got under the table. She came to the door and looked in, and then she gave a sort of grunt and said: ‘Come out from under there.’ So I came out.
    â€œWell, she’s got nerve all right. Most people, they come into the diningroom and find a lion there, and they give a yip and dive through the window. Sometimes they don’t even bother about the yip. But she just said: ‘H’m. I’ve heard about you. Hungry, I suppose.’ And she went out in the kitchen and got me some more to eat. Then she said: ‘You’d better take a nap while I think what’s to be done with you.’
    â€œI hadn’t had much sleep for a week, and now with a good hot meal inside me I could hardly keep my eyes open. So I went back under the table. Next thing was, I woke up with this collar and chain on. I’ve been here ever since.”
    â€œWhy did she keep you, I wonder?” Freddy said.
    â€œShe thought I’d escaped from a zoo, and maybe there’d be a reward. But she didn’t have to chain me. I’d have had to stay—until spring anyway. This chain business made me mad.”
    â€œShe was pretty good to you though, at that.”
    â€œDon’t you kid yourself. Sure,