The Mouse and the Motorcycle - Beverly Cleary [16]
“Well, well! If it isn’t Ralph!” said Uncle Lester, who had a nest inside the wall of the housekeeper’s office, where the maids dropped doughnut crumbs every morning at ten o’clock when they had their coffee. “What’s this I hear about you riding up and down the halls on a motorcycle?” Uncle Lester had a way of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
“My land, a motorcycle,” said old Aunt Dorothy. “Isn’t that pretty dangerous?”
“Wouldn’t mind riding one myself if I were a few years younger,” said Uncle Lester.
All the little cousins came crowding around Ralph. “Show us your motorcycle,” they squeaked. “We want to ride it. Come on, give us a ride on your motorcycle, Ralph. Huh, Ralph? Come on, Ralph. Please!”
Ralph knew he was expected to be polite to all his relatives, even the squeaky little cousins. “Well…” Embarrassed and ashamed, he looked down at the floor. “I sort of…lost the motorcycle. In a pile of sheets and pillowcases.”
“Lost the motorcycle! Oh, Ralph,” cried his mother, genuinely alarmed.
Ralph knew what she was thinking. Did this mean the end of room service? Did she have to go back to pilfering crumbs for his brothers and sisters?
“That’s a young mouse for you,” said tactless Uncle Lester. “Can’t take care of anything.”
“If anybody asks me, I think it’s a good thing he lost it,” said Aunt Dorothy. “Riding a motorcycle is just plain foolhardy.”
All the little cousins looked disappointed and sulky. “I don’t think he ever had a motorcycle,” said one.
“I bet he just made it up,” said another, and the rest agreed.
Ralph felt terrible. The family reunion swirled on around him. The muffin and cookie were divided. Cousins fought over the blueberries. Uncles, usually overweight uncles, asked for second helpings. Everyone talked at once. The little cousins finished their dinner and went racing around the mouse nest. The aunts and uncles raised their voices to be heard above the racket their children made.
Suddenly there came from the knothole a noise that drowned out the squeaks and squeals of young mice at play.
“Sh-h-h!”
Not a mouse moved. They looked at one another, too terrified to speak.
“Pst! Hey, Ralph, come on out,” whispered Keith at the entrance to the mouse nest.
Ralph’s mother gave him a little shove, but no one spoke. With heavy feet Ralph walked to the knothole, but he did not go out into Room 215. “What do you want?” he asked.
“You and your family better be quiet in there or my mother will hear you. You know how she is about mice,” Keith said. “I don’t know why people say things are as quiet as mice. You sound like a pretty noisy bunch to me.”
Behind Ralph his relatives began to tiptoe quietly away to their own homes, leaving his mother to do all the cleaning up. “Did you have a nice picnic?” Ralph asked, dreading what he must tell the boy.
“Yes. We saw an old mining town with a real jail with bars on the windows.”
Keith reached into his pocket and pulled out something curved and hard and white with a rubber band fastened to it with a piece of Scotch tape. “I brought you a present,” he said. “Come on out.”
Puzzled and curious, Ralph squeezed through the knothole. “What is it?” he asked. Whatever the object was, he had never seen anything like it.
“Half a Ping-Pong ball I found down in the game room,” said Keith. “See, I padded the inside with thistledown and anchored the rubber band to the top with Scotch tape.”
“What for?” Ralph still did not understand.
“A crash helmet for you.” Keith set the half Ping-Pong ball on Ralph’s head and slipped the rubber band carefully around his whiskers until it rested under his chin. “There. That’s just right. You need it big so there will be plenty of room for your ears. When you ride a motorcycle you need a crash helmet.”
Ralph peered at Keith from under his new crash helmet, which rested lightly on his head. He knew he looked every inch a motorcycle racer, but never in his whole life had he felt so ashamed. He longed to crawl off into his hole and never face Keith again, but his conscience, which until now he did not know he had,