Читать книгу Freddy and the Bean Home News - Walter Rollin Brooks - Страница 5

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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 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.