The Mouse and the Motorcycle - Beverly Cleary [4]
Outside in the hall Ralph heard footsteps and Matt, the bellboy, saying, “These new people in 215 and 216, somehow they got the idea there are mice in the hotel. I just opened the window and told them the management wouldn’t stand for it.”
Ralph heard a delighted laugh from the second-floor maid, a college girl who was working for the summer season. “Mice are adorable but just the same, I hope I never find any in my rooms. I’m afraid of them.” There were two kinds of employees at the Mountain View Inn—the regulars, none of them young, and the summer help, who were college students working during the tourist season.
“If you don’t like mice you better stay away from that knothole under the window in Room 215,” advised Matt.
The sound of voices so close made Ralph more eager than ever to escape. “No!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the metal chamber. “I won’t have it! I’m too young to be dumped out with the trash!”
In spite of his aches he jumped to his feet, ran across the wastebasket floor, and leaped against the wall, only to fall back in a sorry heap. He rose, backed off, and tried again. There he was on the floor of the wastebasket a second time. It was useless, utterly useless. He did not have the strength to tip over the wastebasket.
Ralph was not a mouse to give up easily. He considered his problem a moment before he rolled the motorcycle over to the wall of the wastebasket. Then he seized the apple core by the stem and dragged it over to the motorcycle. By putting his shoulder under the stem end, he managed to raise the core until it was standing on its blossom end, but when he put his front paws around it and tried to lift it, he found he could not. The core was too heavy to lift up onto the seat of the motorcycle. Ralph was disappointed but when he stopped to think it over, he saw that even if he could manage to get the apple core on top of the motorcycle, it still would not be high enough to allow him to climb out of the wastebasket.
Bruised and defeated, Ralph dropped the core and decided that he might as well be thrown out with the trash on a full stomach as an empty one. He took a bite of apple and felt a little better. It was the best food he had eaten for several days—juicy and full of flavor and much better than the damp zwieback crumbs the last guests had left behind. He took several more bites and settled down to a hearty meal, saving the seeds for dessert.
Two ant scouts appeared on the rim of the wastebasket.
“Go away,” said Ralph crossly, because he did not like to eat food crawling with ants and because it embarrassed him to be seen in such a predicament. The ants left as silently as they had come.
When Ralph had eaten his fill of the apple he curled up beside the core. He only hoped that someone might happen to drop a Kleenex over him. It was bad enough to be carried to one’s doom in a wastebasket, but to be carried to one’s doom by a shrieking maid was unthinkable. There was one tiny ray of hope—if someone did happen to drop a Kleenex over him, he just might have a chance to jump and run when the maid tipped the basket up to empty it into the incinerator.
The thought that the boy was sure to miss his motorcycle and start looking for it kept Ralph tossing and turning behind the apple core until, stuffed and exhausted, he finally fell asleep.
4
Keith
Ralph did not know how much time had passed before he was awakened by the lamp on the bedside table shining down on him. He squeezed himself into the tiniest possible ball, wrapped his tail around his body, and tried to make himself as thin as the apple core.
“My motorcycle!” shouted the boy the very first thing. “Somebody stole my motorcycle!”
Oh-oh, thought Ralph. It won’t be long now.
“Nobody stole your motorcycle,” answered the boy’s mother from 216. “It’s around someplace. You just mislaid it. You can find it in the morning. You had better get ready for bed now.”
“No, I didn’t mislay it,” insisted the boy. “I put it right