Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [2]
“This is no life for a growing mouse,” said Uncle Lester. “It is time you moved back upstairs to the mouse nest and helped lay in supplies for the lean months between summer and the ski season. You know nobody comes to this old hotel to spill crumbs as long as there is a vacant room in one of the new motels out on the highway.”
The clock finished striking midnight, and Ralph’s relatives crept out of their hiding places.
“He won’t,” said one of the bigger little cousins. “He won’t because he’s selfish.”
“You keep out of this,” said Ralph.
“He is! He is! He’s just plain selfish!” squeaked the little brothers and sisters and cousins.
The night clerk stirred in his sleep, and all the mice froze into silence until the sound of snores came from the couch. All hotel mice know they are safe from people who are snoring. The argument continued.
“He keeps everything for himself,” complained a little brother.
“That’s right,” agreed another. “He never gives any of us a ride on his motorcycle.”
“Now Ralph,” said his mother, “it wouldn’t hurt you to give the little mice a ride once in a while.”
“I thought you said motorcycle riding was dangerous,” Ralph reminded his mother.
“That’s no way to talk to your mother,” said Uncle Lester. “You don’t have to speed. You can push your young relatives up and down the hall.”
“Push them!” squeaked Ralph in horror. Push little mice up and down the hall on his beautiful motorcycle with its plastic seat and its pair of shining chromium mufflers! What a shocking idea. A motorcycle was not a kiddy car.
“Now Ralph, sharing your motorcycle won’t hurt you one bit,” said his mother. “Don’t look so sulky.”
“Me first! Me first!” shrilled the little mice, pushing and shoving.
“Ralph, get that look off your face!”
Uncle Lester looked so stern that Ralph knew there was no way out. “Even the girls?” he asked.
“Of course,” said his mother. “Quiet, children, or you will wake up the night clerk.”
Ralph wished the little mice would wake up the night clerk, so he would have an excuse for hiding his motorcycle. However, his young relatives, who were, in Ralph’s opinion, a fearful bunch, were silenced, and there was nothing for Ralph to do but boost the nearest little one up onto the seat of the motorcycle. “Gimme the crash helmet,” demanded the passenger.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Uncle Lester. “Let him wear it.”
Ralph removed his treasured helmet, placed it on the head of his small passenger, and wheeled the awed little mouse down the hall and back. “More! More!” demanded the passenger.
“You had your turn.” Ralph spoke shortly as he looked with distaste at his young relatives scrambling all over one another in their eagerness to be next. There were so many of them. Pushing them up and down the hall would take him all night. “Come on,” he said crossly to his nearest cousin, as he clapped the crash helmet on his head and boosted him onto the plastic seat. “Let’s get it over with.”
“Faster!” demanded the cousin. “I want to go faster.”
“You be quiet!” said Ralph. “You wanted a ride, and you’re getting it.”
Ralph soon found that pushing the motorcycle along the bare floor at the edge of the hall was easier than pushing it through the carpet. Up and down the hall he trudged with one little mouse after another, while he longed to be riding off into the kitchen where the linoleum made the best speedway in the hotel.
Up and down the hall plodded Ralph with brothers, sisters, cousins. He grew more and more rebellious as the stars outside the hotel grew dim above the pine trees. The motorcycle was his. It was given to him by a boy to ride, not to use as a kiddy car for a lot of wiggly, squirmy little mice. A motorcycle was not a toy. Why couldn’t his mother and Uncle Lester understand? Because they were too old to understand. Too old and too timid, that was why.
Ralph felt sorry for himself, caught as he was between two generations of mice. (Most of his own litter had died from eating poisoned grain put out by a particularly disagreeable cook.) There was