Freddy Goes to the North Pole

Walter R. Brooks

Description

The delightful detective story about the beloved animal characters on Mr. Bean's farm, whose adventures have entertained so many children. Freddy the Pig, stimulated by reading Sherlock Holmes, sets up in a business as a detective.

There's trouble on the Bean farm. First a toy train disappears. Then Prinny the Dog's dinner is missing and Egbert the Rabbit is nowhere to be found. The animals of Bean Farm need a detective, and fast! Luckily, Freddy the Pig is on the case. Having just finished reading Sherlock Holmes, Freddy and his partner Mrs. Wiggins the Cow set up a detective agency in the barn. But when Freddy's best friend Jinx the Cat is framed for a dastardly deed, all of Freddy's detecting skills are put to the test.

Sujets

• 6-12 ans
• Toute la fiction jeunesse
• Jeunesse Animaux
• Animals
• Juvenilee Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636241
• Langue: English

Extrait

Freddy Goes to the North Pole
by Walter Rollin Brooks
Subjects: Fiction -- Juvenile; Animals.

First published in 1930
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Freddy Goes To the North Pole
WALTER R. BROOKS

CHAPTER I
FREDDY HAS AN IDEA

Jinx, the cat, was walking round in thebushes behind the barn, looking for excitement.Things had been very quiet on the farmfor a long time. Nothing really interestinghad happened since spring, when he and theother animals had come back from their trip toFlorida. That had been a great trip! He purredwhenever he thought of it.
Suddenly he crouched down and began tolash his tail. A little grey shape darted out fromunder the barn into the shadow of a bush.Noiselessly Jinx crept forward, inch by inch,until he was within jumping-distance. But justas he was about to spring, a little squeaky voicecame from under the bush:
“Hey, Jinx! Stop it! It’s me—Eeny!”
Jinx stopped crouching and straightened up.He gave a disgusted sniff. “I might have knownit!” he growled. “There’s never anything newaround this place! Since I made friends withyou and your family and promised to leaveyou alone, I haven’t seen hide nor hair, nortooth nor tail of anything I could hunt. Friendship’sall very well, but it spoils lots of goodsport.”
“I’m sorry,” said the mouse. He came outfrom the shadow and sat down beside Jinx andbegan to clean his whiskers with his fore-paws.“But you ought to be more careful, Jinx. Youmight have jumped on me and hurt me.”
“How’d I know it was you?” said the cat.“You said your cousins were giving a partydown in the pasture. I thought you’d be downthere.”
“I was,” said Eeny. “But I came away early.It wasn’t much of a party. Why, all they gaveus to eat was grass roots and a little birchbark. Even if they are my cousins, I must say—”
“Oh, don’t tell me anything about relatives!”said Jinx. “I’ve got a dozen brothersand sisters in this neighbourhood, but if I wasstarving, d’you think any of ’em would give meas much as a robin’s claw or a mouse tail—excuseme, Eeny.”
The mouse shuddered slightly and curledhis tail tightly under him. “Don’t mention it,”he said.
Jinx gave a loud laugh. “I won’t—again,”he said. “Come on, let’s go down to the pig-penand see what Freddy’s doing.”
As Jinx and Eeny walked side by sidethrough the orchard, they met Mrs. Bean, thefarmer’s wife. Mrs. Bean had an empty bucketin her hand, because she had been feeding thepigs; and when she saw the two of them, shestared and stared. “Land sakes!” she exclaimed.“What this farm’s coming to I don’tknow! When I was a girl, animals behaved theway you expected them to. Cats and micedidn’t go out walking together and pigs didn’tread newspapers and there weren’t any ofthese animal parties given in the barn. It’smore like a circus than a farm here ever sincethese animals got back from Florida last year.Here, Jinx! Come, kitty, kitty!”
Jinx walked over to her. He didn’t want to,but Mrs. Bean liked him and was very good tohim, so he was always polite to her. She pettedhim and scratched his head, and then shepointed to Eeny, who, while he waited for hisfriend, was nibbling at an apple that hadfallen from one of the trees.
“Look, Jinx. Go chase the mouse. See?Nice fat mouse! M’m! Mice, Jinx, mice!”
Jinx crouched down and lashed his tail.“I’ll have to chase you, Eeny,” he said. “Runover towards the fence, and I’ll pretend tolook for you, and then we can go on downand see Freddy.”
Eeny scurried off, squeaking with pretendedfright, and Jinx, looking as ferocious aspossible, bounded after him. But as soon asthey were out of sight of Mrs. Bean, theywalked along again side by side.
“What did she mean about pigs readingnewspapers?” asked Eeny.
“Oh,” said Jinx, “that’s Freddy. I’ve beenteaching him to read and he’s crazy about it.He reads everything he can lay his hoofs onnow.”
“Good gracious!” squeaked the mouse. “Ididn’t know you could read, Jinx.”
“Read!” Jinx waved his tail importantly.“That’s nothing. I can do anything I set mymind to. I learned to read sitting on Mrs.Bean’s lap when she read the newspaper outloud to Mr. Bean.”
As they came in sight of the pig-pen, theysaw quite a group of animals sitting round ina circle outside, and in the middle of it wasFreddy. He seemed to be reading aloud froma paper that lay on the ground in front of him,for whenever he said anything, all the otherswould either cheer or groan.
“Hurry up! He’s reading the baseballnews!” said Jinx, and started to run.
Eeny started to run too, but his legs weremuch too short to keep up with a cat. “Hey,Jinx, wait for me!” he shouted.
Jinx stopped. “Sorry,” he said, and, pickingup the mouse carefully in his mouth, boundeddown into the middle of the circle, knockingover one or two of the smaller pigs as he did so.That was the way Jinx always did things. Hehad the best heart in the world, but he was aptto be rather rough and thoughtless.
“ ’Lo, Freddy, old scout,” he said. “Whowon yesterday?”
“The Giants,” said the pig. “Very closegame. Two and two at the end of the eighthinning, and then Whippenberger knocked ahome run and brought two men in.”
“Whippenberger?” said Jinx. “Who’s he?That new shortstop? What’s his batting average?”
“Oh my goodness!” said Freddy crossly.“You can read, Jinx. Why don’t you look it upyourself? I’m sick of doing the reading for allthe animals on the farm. I don’t get a chance todo anything I want to any more. Always somebodycoming down here to get me to readsomething. And I’m especially sick of readingall these long accounts of baseball games.Maybe you get some fun out of it, but I don’t.What’s the sense of getting all excited abouta game played by somebody else—a gamethat we animals couldn’t play ourselves if wewanted to? I think it’s silly.”
Freddy was usually so cheerful and good-naturedthat all the other animals were verymuch surprised at this outburst, and they justsat and stared at him without saying anything.But Jinx said:
“Maybe you’re right, Freddy. I’d a lotrather go out and have adventures of my ownthan sit home and read about those somebodyelse had. Look at the fun we had going toFlorida. Wasn’t that better than reading abook about it?”
“Yes, yes. Oh my, I should say so!”exclaimed Freddy and Eeny and Robert, thedog. They and Jinx were the only ones therewho had taken the Florida trip, and they naturallyfelt a little superior to the other animalson that account and were sometimes inclinedto put on airs about it. And Ferdinand, thecrow, who lived in the woods, had a very exasperatinghabit of sitting up in the big elm nearthe barn, where all the animals could hear him,and puffing out his chest and saying importantly:“Well, when I was in Florida—” Andthen he would burst into a loud derisive laugh.
So now, as soon as the subject of Florida wasbrought up, all the other animals groaned andwalked away, leaving Freddy and Eeny andJinx and Robert alone.
“I mean what I said, Jinx,” said Freddy.“We ought to be doing something ourselves,instead of reading about what somebody elsedoes. We ought to take another trip.”
“We haven’t been back from Florida verylong,” said Robert. “I don’t think we oughtto take another trip now. We all have ourwork to do on the farm, and we can’t do itif we’re always running off on pleasure trips.It wouldn’t be fair to Mr. Bean. He feeds usand takes care of us, and we mustn’t go backon him.”
“That’s right,” said Freddy. “But I tellyou what. I have an idea. Just wait till I runinto my study for a minute. There’s somethingI want to read to you.”
Freddy had gathered together quite a libraryof old newspapers and printed advertisingfolders, which he kept in one corner ofthe pig-pen. He also had The Complete Worksof Shakespeare in One Volume , which formany years had been almost indispensable toMr. and Mrs. Bean, since they had used it toprop up the corner of their bed that didn’thave any leg on it. But when they could affordit, they bought a new bed, and then the bookwas thrown out and Freddy got it.
Freddy was very proud of his study, althoughit was so dark in the pig-pen thatnobody could possibly study there, or evenread. But he knew all the different papersand pamphlets by their smell (the smellof The Complete Works of Shakespeare inOne Volume differs from that of last week’snewspaper more than you would believe),and so when he wanted to read anything,he just went in and got it and carried it outside.
Pretty soon he came back with a little booklet.On the cover it said: Personally ConductedTours to Europe . And inside were picturesof some of the places people could bepersonally conducted to. Freddy read it aloudto them and explained how for a certainamount of money a person could join one ofthese tours, and then he didn’t have to botherabout buying his tickets or checking his baggageor anything. The company who ran thetour saw to everything, and it took him andall the other tourists round and showed themall the sights and got them back home safely.“And,” said Freddy, “I don’t see why wecouldn’t run such a company ourselves. Sincewe got back from Florida, lots of other animals,not only on this farm, but on other farmsround here, have been wanting to take sucha trip.”
“I know a lot of mice that would like togo,” said Eeny. “Only it’s such a long way!”
“Oh, for animals that don’t want to go faror can’t get away for more than a day or two,we could get up short trips round here,” saidFreddy. “There are lots of interesting sightsto see within just a short distance. Of coursedifferent animals are interested in differentthings. But we could have a tour of the pondsand rivers for