The Mouse and the Motorcycle - Beverly Cleary [19]
“Be quiet!” ordered Uncle Lester. “Do you want them to find us?”
Ralph knew that no matter what the others chose to do, he was not going to flee from the hotel, not until he found out what had happened to the motorcycle. He was very sure of this and all at once he felt calm and clearheaded as he had never felt before. He knew exactly what his family should do.
“Be quiet, everybody,” Ralph ordered, standing up straight so all his relatives could see him. “I will tell you what we are going to do.”
“See here, Ralph,” interrupted Uncle Lester. “You are pretty young to be giving orders to your elders.”
“Now Lester,” said Aunt Dorothy. “Let’s listen to Ralph. After all, he has our food brought up by room service. No one else in the history of the family has managed that.”
This silenced Uncle Lester and Ralph was allowed to continue. “What we should do is keep quiet for a few days.” Here he looked down at his little cousins, who for once in their lives were not squeaking. “I will arrange for room service to bring our meals so we won’t have to go scrabbling around in the woodwork or scrounging around in the rooms. That way we won’t be tempted to taste any poison food or go near any traps, and if the management doesn’t see or hear any of us for a few days, they will forget about us. They always do.”
“Now just a minute,” said Uncle Lester. “This boy won’t be here long. You know how it is with people. Here today and gone tomorrow.”
Ralph had the answer. “This is only Sunday. He will be here until Tuesday because Monday is the Fourth of July and his father says he won’t drive in holiday weekend traffic. He always brings us plenty and if we don’t stuff ourselves we can save enough to last until the management forgets us.”
Uncle Lester nodded thoughtfully. “That seems like a sound idea.”
“Yes, but Ralph, there is one thing that worries me,” said his mother. “How are we going to tip room service? When people have a waiter bring food to the room they always give him a coin or two for his service. We haven’t any money.”
Ralph had not thought of this.
“If we are going to continue to accept room service we must do the right thing,” insisted his mother.
“Don’t worry. I’ll think of something,” promised Ralph in the grand way he had acquired since he had ordered a meal sent up to the mouse nest.
10
An Anxious Night
At first Ralph’s scheme worked. Keith delivered the promised bacon, toast, and jelly; the mice ate sparingly and laid aside the leftovers against the day Keith must leave the hotel. Ralph’s mother continued to worry about tipping room service. “I want to do the right thing,” she insisted. “There must be some way we could manage a tip.” The mice dared not leave the nest to search for small coins that might have rolled under beds and dressers.
It was late in the afternoon when Ralph heard Keith and his parents returning to their rooms. Very quietly, so that his toenails did not make scrabbling sounds in the woodwork, he slipped to the knothole and peeped out in time to see Keith flop down on the bed.
“Do I have to go down to the dining room for dinner?” Keith asked his mother and father. “I’m not hungry.”
Oh-oh, thought Ralph. There goes dinner.
“I told you not to eat that whole bag of peanuts so close to dinnertime,” said his father.
“I didn’t eat all of it,” said Keith.
That’s good, thought Ralph. At least there would be peanuts for dinner.
“You’ll feel better after you get washed up for dinner,” said Mrs. Gridley. “Hurry along now.”
When his parents had gone into Room 216, Ralph noticed that Keith seemed to drag himself off the bed. He walked to the washbasin, turned on the cold water, moistened his fingers, and wiped them over his face. Then he turned off the water and gave the middle of his face a swipe with a towel, which he returned to the towel rack in such a way that it immediately fell to the floor. Keith did not pick it up, but there was nothing unusual about this. Boys rarely picked up towels. What was unusual was that Keith returned to