The Mouse and the Motorcycle - Beverly Cleary [11]
The boy laughed. “It was a peanut butter sandwich. Sure, I’ll bring you a peanut butter sandwich. Or part of one. I’ll eat part of it myself. It’ll be kind of a funny breakfast, but I won’t mind that.”
“Where will you leave it?” asked Ralph.
Keith thought a minute. “Where do you live?” he asked.
“In the knothole under the window.”
“No kidding!” Keith laughed. “That’s the hole I poked my finger in last night.”
“I’ll say you did,” said Ralph. “Scared me out of a year’s growth. Nobody has ever guessed it’s a mousehole because it’s a knothole instead of a chewed hole.”
“I tell you what,” said Keith. “I’ll bring up part of a peanut butter sandwich and poke it through the knothole.”
“Just like room service!” Ralph could not have been more pleased with the suggestion. “Uh—what about the motorcycle?” he asked. “Where are you going to leave that?”
“In my suitcase, I guess.”
“Aw, come on,” pleaded Ralph. “Have a heart. Leave it someplace where I can get it while you’re out during the day.”
“You’re supposed to be in your mousehole asleep, not riding around in the daylight where people can see you.”
“Well, gee whiz, can’t a fellow even look at it?” asked Ralph. “I bet you like to look at big motorcycles yourself.”
“Yes, I do,” admitted the boy. “Well—I’ll leave it back under the bed like I said, but you promise not to ride it until after dark.”
“Scout’s honor.” Ralph jumped off the bed and ran off to the knothole.
Ralph’s home was furnished with a clutter of things people drop on the floor of a hotel room—bits of Kleenex, hair, ravelings. His mother was always planning to straighten it out, but she never got around to it. She was always too busy fussing and worrying. Now, as Ralph expected, she was dividing Ry-Krisp crumbs among his squeaky bunch of little brothers and sisters while she waited to scold him.
“Ralph, if I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times—” she began.
“Guess what!” interrupted Ralph in an attempt to change the subject. “Somebody in 215 is going to bring us a real peanut butter sandwich!”
“Ralph!” cried his frightened mother. “You haven’t been associating with people!”
“Aw, he’s just a boy,” said Ralph, deciding to keep the complete story of the dangers and the glories of the past night to himself. “He wouldn’t hurt us. He likes mice.”
“But he’s a person,” said his mother.
“That doesn’t mean he has to be bad,” said Ralph. “Just like Pop used to say, people shouldn’t say all mice are timid just because some mice are. Or that all mice play when the cat’s away just because some do.”
“Just the same, Ralph,” said his mother. “I do wish you would be more careful whom you associate with. I am so afraid you’ll fall in with the wrong sort of friends.”
“I’m growing up,” said Ralph. “I’m getting too old to hang around a mouse nest all the time. I want to go out and see the world. I want to go down on the ground floor and see the kitchen and the dining room and the storeroom and the garbage cans out back.”
“Oh, Ralph,” cried his mother. “Not the ground floor. Not all the way down there. You aren’t old enough.”
“Yes, I am,” said Ralph stoutly.
“There’s no telling what you might run into down there—mousetraps, cats, poison. Why, out by the garbage cans you might even be seen by an owl.”
“I don’t care,” said Ralph. “Someday I’m going downstairs.”
“But think of the owls, Ralph,” implored his mother. “We moved into the hotel because of the owls. It was after your Uncle Leroy disappeared and his bones were found in an owl pellet—”
The mother mouse’s plea was interrupted by the sound of Keith returning to Room 215. “Now you’ll see,” said Ralph to his mother and waited, anxious lest his friend let him down.
Sure enough, Keith came to the knothole. “Psst!” he whispered. “Here it is. The waitress thought I was crazy, ordering a peanut butter