Young Fredle - Louise Yates [3]
“There’s what’s left of a potato chunk over here,” Fredle offered. “If you want it.”
Axle did, and she bit right into it.
“Do you think humans like having us here to clean up the crumbs?” Fredle asked.
“Well, if it wasn’t for us, ants would be all over the kitchen, that’s for sure,” Axle said.
“But then, why have a cat? Why set traps?”
“You’re not asking me to figure out humans, are you, little cousin?”
“But why else would the dogs leave us those brown things to eat?”
“Nobody gives away food,” Axle told him. “Even I know that rule.”
“And why else—?”
“Sometimes I agree with your parents,” Axle said, finishing off the potato. “You ask too many questions and I’m tired of them. Go bother your grandfather.”
Grandfather and Fredle often lingered on the pantry floor after the others had scrambled up between the walls. They lingered to talk, and also because Grandfather had grown slow, and he didn’t want to hold the others back. Grandfather told Fredle everything he remembered about the long-ago days on the Old Davis Place. “The dogs are new. Not as new as the baby, but I remember when there were no dogs,” Grandfather said. “I remember when there were two cats, but no traps. Foraging was easier then, without traps.”
“Axle can snatch food from traps,” Fredle said.
“Your cousin wants to be different.”
Fredle knew that, and he admired it.
“It will lead her into trouble,” Grandfather warned. “Or worse.”
“What’s worse?” Fredle wondered.
“I just hope you won’t let it lead you,” Grandfather said. “But we’ve been talking here too long and your mother will be getting all het up. It’s time to get back up home, young Fredle.”
At their own nest, Mother was awake and worrying. “Where were you?”
“You knew we were in the pantry,” Grandfather told her as they climbed in over the rim.
“What if Fredle took it into his head to run back into the kitchen? Or followed that cousin of his off somewhere? He’s too curious and you can’t deny it.”
That, Fredle knew, was true. He asked questions and listened to the answers and remembered what he had been told. He enjoyed being curious.
“You know what humans say,” his mother said, “and I’ve heard them saying it with my own ears, especially Missus, and more than once. Curiosity killed the cat. Just think about that for one minute, Fredle. Think about what a terrible monster curiosity must be, if it can kill a cat. I don’t know about you, but it frightens me just to say the word.”
“Now, Mother,” Father said in his soothing voice. “You don’t have to worry about that right now. Everyone’s home safe, so we can sleep.”
Fredle was curious about curiosity, and he did wonder if mice weren’t right to be afraid of it. A couple of nights later, as they waited in the pantry to make the climb back up between the walls, he asked his grandfather, “Do I ask too many questions?”
“Not for me,” Grandfather said. “But you don’t want to be a bad example to Kidle.”
“How could I do that?” asked Fredle.
“By always asking questions. By following Axle around the way you do. By worrying your mother.”
“Mother worries about everything, not just me.”
Grandfather sighed. He knew.
“She even worries about what’s only old stories,” Fredle said. “About cellar mice, because they’re so rough and rude in the stories. She worries that they’re so big and strong, and what if they try to move up into the kitchen? Or attic mice, chewing on paper and cloth up in the cold—what if they start starving and come to take our food? She even worries about outside. Nobody’s ever seen outside, nobody even knows if it’s really true.”
“Does it matter if a story is true?” Grandfather asked.
“Yes!” cried Fredle. “It does! It’s hard to understand something if you can’t even tell if it’s false or true.”
“There’s only so much a mouse can hope to know, young Fredle,” Grandfather advised. “Live longer and you’ll learn that. If you’re a mouse, you have to accept the way things are.”
He was thinking about Grandmother,