Freddy and the Perilous Adventure Read Free Page A

they had voices that could only be heard for about two inches, neither of them could take Freddy’s place. They were Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the spiders.
    Quik, one of the mice who lived in the farmhouse, came down to the pigpen just before supper time to tell Freddy that the Webbs wanted to see him. Since it was an hour’s hard walk for Mr. Webb from the house to the pigpen, he usually asked one of the mice to go for Freddy when he wanted to talk to him. The pig found the Webbs in a crack between two boards on the back porch where they usually waited when they had an engagement with one of the farm animals. He put his snout down and they climbed up on it, and then, trying not to tickle, walked up close to his ear.
    â€œHow about taking us up on this balloon trip, Freddy?” said Mr. Webb. “Couldn’t you smuggle us aboard?”
    â€œI don’t see why not,” said the pig. “But—are you sure you’d like it? We may be carried hundreds of miles before we get to earth again.”
    â€œWe went to Florida, didn’t we?” said the spider. “And we’d like to get away. We both need a change—mother particularly. She’s been trying to shake that cough ever since early spring. And you know how it is: you can’t catch flies if you begin to cough every time you try to creep up on one.”
    So Freddy said all right, he’d pick them up if they would ride over to the fair grounds in the phaeton with the other animals.
    Usually on summer mornings Freddy woke up as quickly as possible and dashed off to the duck pond to take his morning dip with the others. But on the morning of the Fourth he tried to wake up as slowly as possible. First he just listened. That rushing sound—could it be rain? He tried to pretend it was rain and to go back to sleep, but he knew that sound too well—it was wind in the treetops. Wind! And he was going up in a balloon!
    But maybe it was cloudy! He opened one eye and looked at the window. But the eye didn’t tell him anything, because the window was so dirty that from the inside it always looked as if a storm was coming up. He opened his other eye, sighed, and slowly crawled out of bed. And then he saw a streak of sunlight under the door.
    Now of course Freddy could have run away, or he could have pretended that he was sick or something like that, but he was not that kind of a pig. If something unpleasant had to be done, he did it. He just wanted to be sure first that it really had to be done. So now he went over to the looking glass and tried different expressions on his face, to see which one would be the most suitable for the occasion.
    Of course pigs don’t wear regular clothes, so all Freddy had to put on was an expression when he got up in the morning. And on important mornings it often took him longer to dress that it would you or me. For he had a good many different expressions. When he went down to the First Animal Bank, of which he was president, he wore the “serious-pig-with-grave-responsibilities-on-his-shoulders” expression. When he was doing detective work, he wore the “keen-eyed-pig-who-misses-nothing” expression. And when he was writing poetry the one he put on was the “dreamy-poetic-pig.” This morning he hesitated between the “in-trepid-pig-who-scoffs-at-peril” and the “pig-who-is-about-to-go-up-in-a-ballon-and-thinks-nothing-of-it.” They were a good deal alike, so he combined the two and wore them both.
    The resulting expression was one of such iron determination that it greatly impressed all the animals with whom he talked that morning. “Why you aren’t scared at all, Freddy,” said Mrs. Wiggins, the cow. “Land sakes, you wouldn’t get me to go up in one of those contraptions.”
    â€œPooh, you wouldn’t be any more scared than I am,” said Freddy truthfully.
    He hung around the barnyard most of the morning, enjoying the