Stuart Little

Stuart Little Garth Williams E. B. White E.B. White's classic novel about a small mouse on a very big adventure, available in eBook for the very first time!Stuart Little is no ordinary mouse. Born to a family of humans, he lives in New York City with his parents, his older brother George, and Snowbell the cat. Though he's shy and thoughtful, he's also a true lover of adventure.Stuart's greatest adventure comes when his best friend, a beautiful little bird named Margalo, disappears from her nest. Determined to track her down, Stuart ventures away from home for the very first time in his life. He finds adventure aplenty. But will he find his friend? Copyright (#ulink_d7f6254b-5bd4-5f1b-b3e2-3fd9d0ee4d98) This ebook edition first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2015 HarperCollins Children’s Books A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in the USA 1945 First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Children’s Books Ltd, 1946 Stuart Little Text copyright © E.B. White, 1945 Text copyright renewed © E.B. White, 1973 Illustration copyright renewed © Garth Williams, 1973 Colourisations copyright © 1999 by Estate of Garth Williams E.B. White and Garth Williams assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008139421 Version: 2015-03-09 Contents Cover (#ue8dbb1f5-4e20-5b6d-85b1-a2a2f4ac7efc) Title Page (#ue9180d54-e206-53dd-86a1-7e4ea0ee0801) Copyright (#ulink_fe2c44ba-652c-5a10-abd8-bf549d4a442f) 1. In the Drain (#ulink_0cdb0740-ab1b-5429-826f-4f52d8a3765c) 2. Home Problems (#ulink_c72e58b9-2f5b-525d-8f9c-f16b269f1e76) 3. Washing Up (#ulink_ee65d3fa-7dc3-5058-9ae0-adfec5797bce) 4. Exercise (#ulink_63f8ee43-7a58-50d0-a159-eea45c27a106) 5. Rescued (#ulink_1ea13dc2-d396-578b-abab-2f8960617306) 6. A Fair Breeze (#ulink_a82d66eb-b5ca-54b3-a9f4-43fdf891f6a7) 7. The Sailboat Race (#litres_trial_promo) 8. Margalo (#litres_trial_promo) 9. A Narrow Escape (#litres_trial_promo) 10. Springtime (#litres_trial_promo) 11. The Automobile (#litres_trial_promo) 12. The Schoolroom (#litres_trial_promo) 13. Ames’ Crossing (#litres_trial_promo) 14. An Evening on the River (#litres_trial_promo) 15. Heading North (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Illustrator (#litres_trial_promo) Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) 1. In the Drain (#ulink_3562bc03-1334-5420-9b64-626f9843f231) WHEN Mrs Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too – wearing a grey hat and carrying a small cane. Mr and Mrs Little named him Stuart, and Mr Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothespins and a cigarette box. Unlike most babies, Stuart could walk as soon as he was born. When he was a week old he could climb lamps by shinnying up the cord. Mrs Little saw right away that the infant clothes she had provided were unsuitable, and she set to work and made him a fine little blue worsted suit with patch pockets in which he could keep his handkerchief, his money, and his keys. Every morning, before Stuart dressed, Mrs Little went into his room and weighed him on a small scale which was really meant for weighing letters. At birth Stuart could have been sent by first class mail for three cents, but his parents preferred to keep him rather than send him away; and when, at the age of a month, he had gained only a third of an ounce, his mother was so worried she sent for the doctor. The doctor was delighted with Stuart and said that it was very unusual for an American family to have a mouse. He took Stuart’s temperature and found that it was 98.6, which is normal for a mouse. He also examined Stuart’s chest and heart and looked into his ears solemnly with a flashlight. (Not every doctor can look into a mouse’s ear without laughing.) Everything seemed to be all right, and Mrs Little was pleased to get such a good report. ‘Feed him up!’ said the doctor cheerfully, as he left. The home of the Little family was a pleasant place near a park in New York City. In the mornings the sun streamed in through the east windows, and all the Littles were up early as a general rule. Stuart was a great help to his parents, and to his older brother George, because of his small size and because he could do things that a mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them. One day when Mrs Little was washing out the bathtub after Mr Little had taken a bath, she lost a ring off her finger and was horrified to discover that it had fallen down the drain. ‘What had I better do?’ she cried, trying to keep the tears back. ‘If I were you,’ said George, ‘I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook and tie it on to a piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it.’ So Mrs Little found a piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour she fished for the ring; but it was dark down the drain and the hook always seemed to catch on something before she could get it down to where the ring was. ‘What luck?’ inquired Mr Little, coming into the bathroom. ‘No luck at all,’ said Mrs Little. ‘The ring is so far down I can’t fish it up.’ ‘Why don’t we send Stuart down after it?’ suggested Mr Little. ‘How about it, Stuart, would you like to try?’ ‘Yes, I would,’ Stuart replied, ‘but I think I’d better get into my old pants. I imagine it’s wet down there.’ ‘It’s all of that,’ said George, who was a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn’t worked. So Stuart slipped into his old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He decided to carry the string along with him, leaving one end in charge of his father. ‘When I jerk three times on the string, pull me up,’ he said. And while Mr Little knelt in the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to view. In a minute or so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr Little carefully hauled it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring safely around his neck. ‘Oh, my brave little son,’ said Mrs Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him. ‘How was it down there?’ asked Mr Little, who was always curious to know about places he had never been to. ‘It was all right,’ said Stuart. But the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother’s violet water before he felt himself again. Everybody in the family thought he had been awfully good about the whole thing. 2. Home Problems (#ulink_4aac0c26-1eff-5344-aefe-517b867f0e0e) STUART was also helpful when it came to Ping-pong. The Littles liked Ping-pong, but the balls had a way of rolling under chairs, sofas, and radiators, and this meant that the players were forever stooping down and reaching under things. Stuart soon learned to chase balls, and it was a great sight to see him come out from under a hot radiator, pushing a Ping-pong ball with all his might, the perspiration rolling down his cheeks. The ball, of course, was almost as high as he was, and he had to throw his whole weight against it in order to keep it rolling. The Littles had a grand piano in their living room, which was all right except that one of the keys was a sticky key and didn’t work properly. Mrs Little said she thought it must be the damp weather, but I don’t see how it could be the damp weather, for the key had been sticking for about four years, during which time there had been many bright clear days. But anyway, the key stuck, and was a great inconvenience to anyone trying to play the piano. It bothered George particularly when he was playing the ‘Scarf Dance,’ which was rather lively. It was George who had the idea of stationing Stuart inside the piano to push the key up the second it was played. This was no easy job for Stuart, as he had to crouch down between the felt hammers so that he wouldn’t get hit on the head. But Stuart liked it just the same: it was exciting inside the piano, dodging about, and the noise was quite terrific. Sometimes after a long session he would emerge quite deaf, as though he had just stepped out of an airplane after a long journey; and it would be some little time before he really felt normal again. Mr and Mrs Little often discussed Stuart quietly between themselves when he wasn’t around, for they had never quite recovered from the shock and surprise of having a mouse in the family. He was so very tiny and he presented so many problems to his parents. Mr Little said that, for one thing, there must be no references to ‘mice’ in their conversation. He made Mrs Little tear from the nursery songbook the page about the ‘Three Blind Mice, See How They Run.’ ‘I don’t want Stuart to get a lot of notions in his head,’ said Mr Little. ‘I should feel badly to have my son grow up fearing that a farmer’s wife was going to cut off his tail with a carving knife. It is such things that make children dream bad dreams when they go to bed at night.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Little, ‘and I think we had better start thinking about the poem “’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” I think it might embarrass Stuart to hear mice mentioned in such a belittling manner.’ ‘That’s right,’ said her husband, ‘but what shall we say when we come to that line in the poem? We’ll have to say something. We can’t just say “’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring.” That doesn’t sound complete; it needs a word to rhyme with house.’ ‘What about louse?’ asked Mrs Little. ‘Or grouse,’ said Mr Little. ‘I suggest souse,’ remarked George, who had been listening to the conversation from across the room. It was decided that louse was the best substitute for mouse, and so when Christmas came around Mrs Little carefully rubbed out the word mouse from the poem and wrote in the word louse, and Stuart always thought that the poem went this way: ’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse. The thing that worried Mr Little most was the mousehole in the pantry. This hole had been made by some mice in the days before the Littles came to live in the house, and nothing had been done about stopping it up. Mr Little was not at all sure that he understood Stuart’s real feeling about a mousehole. He didn’t know where the hole led to, and it made him uneasy to think that Stuart might some day feel the desire to venture into it. ‘After all, he does look a good deal like a mouse,’ said Mr Little to his wife. ‘And I’ve never seen a mouse yet that didn’t like to go into a hole.’ 3. Washing Up (#ulink_ca40017e-5784-5ce8-95cb-1aa7c3c6f4d9) STUART was an early riser: he was almost always the first person up in the morning. He liked the feeling of being the first one stirring; he enjoyed the quiet rooms with the books standing still on the shelves, the pale light coming in through the windows, and the fresh smell of day. In wintertime it would be quite dark when he climbed from his bed made out of the cigarette box, and he sometimes shivered with cold as he stood in his nightgown doing his exercises. (Stuart touched his toes ten times every morning to keep himself in good condition. He had seen his brother George do it, and George had explained that it kept the stomach muscles firm and was a fine abdominal thing to do.) After exercising, Stuart would slip on his handsome wool wrapper, tie the cord tightly around his waist, and start for the bathroom, creeping silently through the long dark hall past his mother’s and father’s room, past the hall closet where the carpet sweeper was kept, past George’s room, and along by the head of the stairs till he got to the bathroom. Of course, the bathroom would be dark, too, but Stuart’s father had thoughtfully tied a long string to the pull-chain of the light. The string reached clear to the floor. By grasping it as high up as he could and throwing his whole weight on it, Stuart was able to turn on the light. Swinging on the string this way, with his long bathrobe trailing around his ankles, he looked like a little old friar pulling the bellrope in an abbey. To get to the washbasin, Stuart had to climb a tiny rope ladder which his father had fixed for him. George had promised to build Stuart a small special washbasin only one inch high and with a little rubber tube through which water would flow; but George was always saying that he was going to build something and then forgetting about it. Stuart just went ahead and climbed the rope ladder to the family washbasin every morning to wash his face and hands and brush his teeth. Mrs Little had provided him with a doll’s size toothbrush, a doll’s size cake of soap, a doll’s size washcloth, and a doll’s comb – which he used for combing his whiskers. He carried these things in his bathrobe pocket, and when he reached the top of the ladder he took them out, laid them neatly in a row, and set about the task of turning the water on. For such a small fellow, turning the water on was quite a problem. He had discussed it with his father one day after making several unsuccessful attempts. ‘I can get up onto the faucet all right,’ he explained, ‘but I can’t seem to turn it on, because I have nothing to brace my feet against.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ his father replied, ‘that’s the whole trouble.’ George, who always listened to conversations whenever he could, said that in his opinion they ought to construct a brace for Stuart; and with that he got out some boards, a saw, a hammer, a screwdriver, a bradawl, and some nails, and started to make a terrific fuss in the bathroom, building what he said was going to be a brace for Stuart. But he soon became interested in something else and disappeared, leaving the tools lying around all over the bathroom floor. Stuart, after examining this mess, turned to his father again. ‘Maybe I could pound the faucet with something and turn it on that way,’ he said. So Stuart’s father provided him with a very small, light hammer made of wood; and Stuart found that by swinging it three times around his head and letting it come down with a crash against the handle of the faucet, he could start a thin stream of water flowing – enough to brush his teeth in, anyway, and moisten his washcloth. So every morning, after climbing to the basin, he would seize his hammer and pound the faucet, and the other members of the household, dozing in their beds, would hear the bright sharp plink plink plink of Stuart’s hammer, like a faraway blacksmith, telling them that day had come and that Stuart was trying to brush his teeth. 4. Exercise (#ulink_cfafc8fa-4bd0-56d4-b32c-bcc03af16502) ONE fine morning in the month of May when Stuart was three years old, he arose early as was his custom, washed and dressed himself, took his hat and cane, and went downstairs into the living room to see what was doing. Nobody was around but Snowbell, the white cat belonging to Mrs Little. Snowbell was another early riser, and this morning he was lying on the rug in the middle of the room, thinking about the days when he was just a kitten. ‘Good morning,’ said Stuart. ‘Hello,’ replied Snowbell, sharply. ‘You’re up early, aren’t you?’ Stuart looked at his watch. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s only five minutes past six, but I felt good and I thought I’d come down and get a little exercise.’ ‘I should think you’d get all the exercise you want up there in the bathroom, banging around, waking all the rest of us up trying to get that water started so you can brush your teeth. Your teeth aren’t really big enough to brush anyway. Want to see a good set? Look at mine!’ Snowbell opened his mouth and showed two rows of gleaming white teeth, sharp as needles. ‘Very nice,’ said Stuart. ‘But mine are all right, too, even though they’re small. As for exercise, I take all I can get. I bet my stomach muscles are firmer than yours.’ ‘I bet they’re not,’ said the cat. ‘I bet they are,’ said Stuart. ‘They’re like iron bands.’ ‘I bet they’re not,’ said the cat. Stuart glanced around the room to see what he could do to prove to Snowbell what good stomach muscles he had. He spied the drawn window shade on the east window, with its shade cord and ring, like a trapeze, and it gave him an idea. Climbing to the windowsill he took off his hat and laid down his cane. ‘You can’t do this,’ he said to the cat. And he ran and jumped on to the ring, the way acrobats do in a circus, meaning to pull himself up. A surprising thing happened. Stuart had taken such a hard jump that it started the shade: with a loud snap the shade flew up clear to the top of the window, dragging Stuart along with it and rolling him up inside, so that he couldn’t budge. ‘Holy mackerel!’ said Snowbell, who was almost as surprised as Stuart Little. ‘I guess that will teach him to show off his muscles.’ ‘Help! Let me out!’ cried Stuart, who was frightened and bruised inside the rolled-up shade, and who could hardly breathe. But his voice was so weak that nobody heard. Snowbell just chuckled. He was not fond of Stuart and it didn’t bother him at all that Stuart was all wrapped up in a window shade, crying and hurt and unable to get out. Instead of running upstairs and telling Mr and Mrs Little about the accident, Snowbell did a very curious thing. He glanced around to see if anybody was looking, then he leapt softly to the windowsill, picked up Stuart’s hat and cane in his mouth, carried them to the pantry and laid them down at the entrance to the mousehole. When Mrs Little came down later and found them there, she gave a shrill scream which brought everybody on the run. ‘It’s happened,’ she cried. ‘What has?’ asked her husband. ‘Stuart’s down the mousehole.’ 5. Rescued (#ulink_6ef00835-7759-574c-8348-111fb32b186f) GEORGE was in favour of ripping up the pantry floor. He ran and got his hammer, his screwdriver, and an ice pick. ‘I’ll have this old floor up in double-quick time,’ he said, inserting his screwdriver under the edge of the first board and giving a good vigorous pry. ‘We will not rip up this floor till we have had a good search,’ announced Mr Little. ‘That’s final, George! You can put that hammer away where you got it.’ ‘Oh, all right,’ said George. ‘I see that nobody in this house cares anything about Stuart but me.’ Mrs Little began to cry. ‘My poor dear little son!’ she said. ‘I know he’ll get wedged somewhere.’ ‘Just because you can’t travel comfortably in a mousehole doesn’t mean that it isn’t a perfectly suitable place for Stuart,’ said Mr Little. ‘Just don’t get yourself all worked up.’ ‘Maybe we ought to lower some food to him,’ suggested George. ‘That’s what the State Police did when a man got stuck in a cave.’ George darted into the kitchen and came running back with a dish of applesauce. ‘We can pour some of this in, and it will run down to where he is.’ George spooned out a bit of the applesauce and started to poke it into the hole. ‘Stop that!’ bellowed Mr Little. ‘George, will you kindly let me handle this situation? Put that applesauce away immediately!’ Mr Little glared fiercely at George. ‘I was just trying to help my own brother,’ said George, shaking his head as he carried the sauce back to the kitchen. ‘Let’s all call to Stuart,’ suggested Mrs Little. ‘It is quite possible that the mousehole branches and twists about, and that he has lost his way.’ ‘Very well,’ said Mr Little. ‘I will count three, then we will all call, then we will all keep perfectly quiet for three seconds, listening for the answer.’ He took out his watch. Mr and Mrs Little and George got down on their hands and knees and put their mouths as close as possible to the mousehole. Then they all called: ‘Stooooo-art!’ And then they all kept perfectly still for three seconds. Stuart, from his cramped position inside the rolled-up shade, heard them yelling in the pantry and called back, ‘Here I am!’ But he had such a weak voice and was so far inside the shade that the other members of the family did not hear his answering cry. ‘Again!’ said Mr Little. ‘One, two, three – Stooooo-art!’ It was no use. No answer was heard. Mrs Little went up to her bedroom, lay down, and sobbed. Mr Little went to the telephone and called up the Bureau of Missing Persons, but when the man asked for a description of Stuart and was told that he was only two inches high, he hung up in disgust. George meantime went down to the cellar and hunted around to see if he could find the other entrance to the mousehole. He moved a great many trunks, suitcases, flowerpots, baskets, boxes, and broken chairs from one end of the cellar to the other in order to get at the section of wall which he thought was likeliest, but found no hole. He did, however, come across an old discarded rowing machine of Mr Little’s, and becoming interested in this, carried it upstairs with some difficulty and spent the rest of the morning rowing. When lunchtime came (everybody had forgotten about breakfast) all three sat down to a lamb stew which Mrs Little had prepared, but it was a sad meal, each one trying not to stare at the small empty chair which Stuart always occupied, right next to Mrs Little’s glass of water. No one could eat, so great was the sorrow. George ate a bit of dessert but nothing else. When lunch was over Mrs Little broke out crying again, and said she thought Stuart must be dead. ‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ growled Mr Little. ‘If he is dead,’ said George, ‘we ought to pull down the shades all through the house.’ And he raced to the windows and began pulling down the shades. ‘George!’ shouted Mr Little in an exasperated tone, ‘if you don’t stop acting in an idiotic fashion, I will have to punish you. We are having enough trouble today without having to cope with your foolishness.’ But George had already run into the living room and had begun to darken it, to show his respect for the dead. He pulled a cord and out dropped Stuart on to the windowsill. ‘Well, for the love of Pete,’ said George. ‘Look who’s here, Mom!’ ‘It’s about time somebody pulled down that shade,’ remarked Stuart. ‘That’s all I can say.’ He was quite weak and hungry. Mrs Little was so overjoyed to see him that she kept right on crying. Of course, everybody wanted to know how it had happened. ‘It was simply an accident that might happen to anybody,’ said Stuart. ‘As for my hat and cane being found at the entrance to the mousehole, you can draw your own conclusions.’ 6. A Fair Breeze (#ulink_bb54d773-c2c8-5b0b-8fca-9a2f4cf7a0ee) ONE morning when the wind was from the west, Stuart put on his sailor suit and his sailor hat, took his spyglass down from the shelf, and set out for a walk, full of the joy of life and the fear of dogs. With a rolling gait he sauntered along toward Fifth Avenue, keeping a sharp lookout. Whenever he spied a dog through his glass, Stuart would hurry to the nearest doorman, climb his trouserleg, and hide in the tails of his uniform. And once, when no doorman was handy, he had to crawl into a yesterday’s paper and roll himself up in the second section till danger was past. At the corner of Fifth Avenue there were several people waiting for the uptown bus, and Stuart joined them. Nobody noticed him, because he wasn’t tall enough to be noticed. ‘I’m not tall enough to be noticed,’ thought Stuart, ‘yet I’m tall enough to want to go to Seventy-second Street.’ When the bus came into view, all the men waved their canes and briefcases at the driver, and Stuart waved his spyglass. Then, knowing that the step of the bus would be too high for him, Stuart seized hold of the cuff of a gentleman’s pants and was swung aboard without any trouble or inconvenience whatever. Stuart never paid any fare on buses, because he wasn’t big enough to carry an ordinary dime. The only time he had ever attempted to carry a dime, he had rolled the coin along like a hoop while he raced along beside it; but it had got away from him on a hill and had been snatched up by an old woman with no teeth. After that experience Stuart contented himself with the tiny coins which his father made for him out of tin foil. They were handsome little things, although rather hard to see without putting on your spectacles. When the conductor came around to collect the fares, Stuart fished in his purse and pulled out a coin no bigger than the eye of a grasshopper. ‘What’s that you’re offering me?’ asked the conductor. ‘It’s one of my dimes,’ said Stuart. ‘Is it, now?’ said the conductor. ‘Well, I’d have a fine time explaining that to the bus company. Why, you’re no bigger than a dime yourself.’ ‘Yes I am,’ replied Stuart angrily. ‘I’m more than twice as big as a dime. A dime only comes up to here on me.’ And Stuart pointed to his hip. ‘Furthermore,’ he added, ‘I didn’t come on this bus to be insulted.’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/e-white-b/stuart-little/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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