Young Fredle - Louise Yates [70]
“When my leg was broken, the vet fixed it. That’s the vet’s job, to make you better, and when that’s done you come home.”
This sounded unhappily like the moonbits story to Fredle, but Sadie seemed confident of her information. “Then why are you worried?” he asked.
“At night, we all go to sleep until morning,” Sadie explained. “But now it’s night and Angus is outside and I’m alone inside. You’re inside, too,” she added in case Fredle had forgotten that, reminding him, “You used to be outside.”
“I did,” he agreed. He tried one last time to get Sadie ready. “What makes you so sure they won’t push the baby out?”
“Why would they do that? That would scare her, and she’d cry. She doesn’t like to be alone,” Sadie told him.
Fredle gave up. Poor Sadie would find out the truth, soon enough. He just waited with her, the dog stretched out on the floor beside the stove behind which the mouse sat, waiting. Every now and then Sadie sighed, and shifted her nose from one paw to the other. They didn’t talk, they just waited.
Fredle did wonder why he cared about what happened to Sadie. Then he remembered that the bravest thing he had ever done had to do with Sadie and her baby. The good feeling that memory gave him made him feel connected to Sadie and made him want to be there to comfort her when Mister and Missus came back home without the baby and she realized that Fredle had been right.
After a long, long time, Angus barked again, even more loudly. “Hello! Hello!”
Sadie jumped up and ran to the door, also barking, “Hello! I’m in the kitchen! I came downstairs, I’m sorry!”
Fredle crept as close as he dared to the stove’s edge.
Heavy footsteps sounded from outside and the door opened. Fredle didn’t dare stick his head out to see. He couldn’t be sure where Patches was and he knew that without Sadie next to him, he wasn’t safe from Patches, inside. So he listened as hard as he could, to find out.
“You should have obeyed. Mister called you and you didn’t obey. They wanted us to be outside and they were already worried. You have to obey better, Sadie.”
“I know. I was sorry right away. But Fredle was here.”
“Fredle? Never mind that, I’m telling you something important.”
“Good boy, Angus,” Mister said. “Hello, Sadie, you’re a good dog, too. You OK, honey?”
“Fine,” Missus said, in a tired voice.
Poor Sadie, Fredle thought. Nobody was saying anything about any baby and he knew what that meant. Angus wasn’t being very sympathetic, either.
Missus said, “Turn off the lights, will you? We don’t want to wake the baby.” Suddenly the light disappeared and the colors disappeared with it. Once again the kitchen was in shadowy darkness. This gray world, which had once been the only world he knew, now made Fredle sad, maybe because now he knew what he wasn’t seeing.
“I’m worn out, aren’t you?” Mister asked. “What a night.”
“Exhausted,” Missus agreed.
Behind his sadness, an idea was barking at Fredle, trying to get his attention. It barked and barked until at last he listened to what it wanted to tell him: You can’t wake up a baby that has been pushed out and left to went. You can’t wake up something that isn’t alive and asleep.
Fredle was shocked. He was shocked and surprised and then he was so excited he thought he might bark, himself. The baby had been fixed and brought back home. Sadie had been right. Everything was all right, after all.
Without waiting any longer, he ran back to the mousehole behind the stove, and from there he climbed back up to his nest, his mind awhirl with a jumble of new ideas. The baby had been sick and the humans had kept it with them. They would keep it until it got better, whenever it was sick. Sadie had had a broken leg, like his grandmother, and a vet—whatever that was, it must be a human who fixed broken things—had fixed it for her. That was the way humans did things. Fredle didn’t know what to think.
But when Fredle woke up the next evening, he knew just exactly what he thought. He thought: Mice don’t know everything. He thought: Some of the rules are wrong. OK, maybe not wrong