Read Online Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes - Free Book Online

And Character his last," suggested Rachel. "Like in colonial times. It sounds like those names."
    "M-m-m," said Jerry.
    Why did that person persist in thinking he could get hold of their puppy? Ginger belonged to the Pyes. He already had a name, Ginger Pye, and he already had a little leather collar around his neck made out of one of Rachel's old skate straps. Anyone could see he really belonged. As soon as he was old enough they would get a license for him. And to keep him safe and sound, they wouldn't let him out of the backyard by himself until he was old enough to bark like the dickens, and even bite, if anybody tried to make off with him.
    Moreover, if Unsavory continued to snoop around
they could tell the policeman. They could describe his hat and the policeman would catch him. Let the man watch out, or he would land in jail, the Cranbury jail, where no one had landed in ten years.
    That was the way the Pyes were talking as they went into the house and made sure the doors were latched. Who latched doors in Cranbury in the daytime, if they were at home? Maybe Judge Ball. Hardly anyone else, though. But the Pyes latched theirs today all right, in case Unsavory should come back. However, they didn't see any more of him or his hat that day.

5. The Perpendicular Swimmer
    The next day was Labor Day. When that was over, school would begin. "Hey," said Jerry Pye to his friend, Dick Badger. "Let's go up to the reservoy for one more last good swim."
    It was a fine warm day and Dick said, "Sure."
    Dick Badger was the boy next door who owned the big black-and-gray hound that scratched his stomach when you scratched his back. Dick Badger knew more ways of earning a nickel than anyone Jerry had ever heard of. He charged a nickel if a boy or a girl wanted to hold his kite or to scratch Duke's back. Of course he didn't charge his best friend, Jerry Pye, anything, or even Rachel or Uncle Bennie. But he charged everybody else and he always had peanuts or gumdrops in his pocket.
    Dick Badger was known as the "perpendicular swimmer." That was his nickname and the way he
came to be known as the perpendicular swimmer was because he almost always swam down and up, and almost never along the surface of the water the way the other fellows did.
    He had learned to swim underwater before he had learned top-of-the-water swimming. He began in fairly shallow water, walking along the bottom of the sea on his hands. Before he knew it, he would be in deep water and swimming down there. Then he would have to shoot upwards for air. The reason for this underwater swimming was that he liked to feel land under his hands, even though it was wet land and at the bottom of the sea, because he felt safer. In this way he had developed his fondness for perpendicular swimming.
    Of course, now he was an excellent swimmer on top of the water as well as underneath, but one rarely saw him on top except every half minute or so when he stuck his wet red nose up for air. He liked to throw shells or pebbles into the water and then swim straight down after them. He said he aimed to swim straight down to the bottom of the reservoir because he wanted to see what was down there. He had heard there was a dead cow and he wanted to see. In the ocean, likewise, he swam under the water instead of along the top. He liked it down there with the

    crabs and killifish. "You should see all the killies down there today," he'd say.
    Dick was a thin wiry sort of boy. On fine days, when the water was sunny and clear, it was a very pleasant sight to see him go diving down, down, and swim awhile along the pebbly bottom of the reservoir, or the sandy bottom of the salt sea, and then shoot straight upwards again in his perpendicular fashion.
    Everyone admired Dick for his special kind of swimming. But sometimes the other fellows would tire of trying to keep up with him under the water and would challenge him to a race on top of the sea. This he always good-naturedly consented to do. He would