Ralph S. Mouse - Beverly Cleary [19]
“Oh, yes,” said the girls, sighing.
The boys were impolite about the suggestion. So was Ralph.
“We don’t know where Ralph is,” was Miss K’s comment, “and perhaps we should wait to write our letters until after the investigation. After all, there may be more mice in the school.”
The disappointed class, who had been planning the angry letters they would write to the newspaper, had to agree.
“But Miss K,” said Gloria, “isn’t your name Heidi?”
Miss K laughed. “Yes, it is.”
“Then how come the reporter called you Bambi?” asked Gloria.
“She must have confused her book characters,” was Miss K’s amused answer.
Ralph saw nothing to be amused about. What would the investigation mean? Cats? An exterminator with traps and poisons? Fumigation with deadly fumes seeping through the halls? That new electronic mouser that made a noise only mice could hear and sent them screaming into the night?
Ralph was sure of only one thing. He had to escape from Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School, and he had to escape soon.
8
Ralph Speaks
Ralph was tired of skulking about, hiding in mittens and boots, scrounging glue-flavored seeds from fourth-grade mosaics, and eating sugar, which he had overheard children say rotted teeth. He was nervous about the mouse hunt that was about to begin at Sneed Elementary School, all because he had innocently wanted to leave the inn to save an old man’s job. Ralph felt that he was being blamed for everything that went wrong and that trying to be good was not worthwhile.
Ralph left Melissa’s boot, because he did not want Ryan to find him. He slipped behind a row of textbooks on health in a bookcase under the window and sat there, pondering large problems such as the unfairness of life and the shortage of liberty and justice for well-meaning mice.
Ralph longed to return to the inn, but he knew that even if he found a way to get there, he could never face the jeering little relatives. First they would demand to know what had happened to his motorcycle. Then they would tell him it served him right that it was broken, because he had been so selfish.
But I’ve got to go someplace, Ralph decided. Perhaps he could move into a restaurant in Cucaracha. Now that the snow was melting, there was no longer any danger of being buried. However, his feet might freeze, or he might drown in dirty slush. He was too angry with Ryan to ask for help. What Ralph needed was transportation other, of course, than feet.
Ralph tried to make plans. If he could somehow get hold of the pieces of his motorcycle, and if he could manage to nip off a strand of Miss K’s strong hair, perhaps he could tie his motorcycle together again.
While Ralph sat brooding behind the books, he was not forgotten by Room 5, who found the problems of a mouse much more interesting than making sentences out of spelling words.
Hands were raised and questions asked. “But Miss K, don’t you think we should try to find Ralph? Somebody might step on him.” “Miss K, how are they going to investigate the school for mice?” “Miss K, will they poison Ralph?”
Miss K laid down her chalk and gave up trying to teach.
“Miss K,” said Ryan. “I’m sure Ralph is the only mouse here. He could have done all those things by himself.”
Ryan’s remark gave the class hope for Ralph. “I know what we could do,” said Melissa. “We could get him to walk across a stamp pad so he would leave purple footprints. That way we could see if he went to the cafeteria and the library and all those places.”
Ralph groaned. Purple feet! That Melissa and her bright ideas.
The class was quick to point out that the ink would soon wear off, that Ralph would have to keep running back to the stamp pad, which no mouse would do. Anyway, they would have to find him first.
“Well, class,” said Miss K, “I can see that we are not going to get any work done until we find out more about the superintendent’s investigation. If you will promise to work quietly on your spelling sentences, I will go ask Mr. Tanner