Charlotte's Web (18 page)

“What had I better do?” she cried, trying to keep the tears back.

“If I were you,” said George, “I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook and tie it onto a piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it.” So Mrs. Little found a piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour she fished for the ring; but it was dark down the drain and the hook always seemed to catch on something before she could get it down to where the ring was.

“What luck?” inquired Mr. Little, coming into the bathroom.

“No luck at all,” said Mrs. Little. “The ring is so far down I can't fish it up.”

“Why don't we send Stuart down after it?” suggested Mr. Little. “How about it, Stuart, would you like to try?”

“Yes, I would,” Stuart replied, “but I think I'd better
get into my old pants. I imagine it's wet down there.”

“It's all of that,” said George, who was a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn't worked. So Stuart slipped into his old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He decided to carry the string along with him, leaving one end in charge of his father. “When I jerk three times on the string, pull me up,” he said. And while Mr. Little knelt in the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to view. In a minute or so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr. Little carefully hauled it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring safely around his neck.

“Oh, my brave little son,” said Mrs. Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him.

“How was it down there?” asked Mr. Little, who was always curious to know about places he had never been to.

“It was all right,” said Stuart.

But the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother's violet water before he felt himself again. Everybody in the family thought he had been awfully good about the whole thing.

Read on for an excerpt from
The Trumpet of the Swan

W
alking back to camp through the swamp, Sam wondered whether to tell his father what he had seen.

“I know
one
thing,” he said to himself. “I'm going back to that little pond again tomorrow. And I'd like to go alone. If I tell my father what I saw today, he will want to go with me. I'm not sure that's a very good idea.”

Sam was eleven. His last name was Beaver. He was strong for his age and had black hair and dark eyes like an Indian. Sam walked like an Indian, too,
putting one foot straight in front of the other and making very little noise. The swamp through which he was traveling was a wild place—there was no trail, and it was boggy underfoot, which made walking difficult. Every four or five minutes Sam took his compass out of his pocket and checked his course to make sure he was headed in a westerly direction. Canada is a big place. Much of it is wilderness. To get lost in the woods and swamps of western Canada would be a serious matter.

As he trudged on, the boy's mind was full of the wonder of what he had seen. Not many people in the world have seen the nest of a Trumpeter Swan. Sam had found one on the lonely pond on this day in spring. He had seen the two great white birds with their long white necks and black bills. Nothing he had ever seen before in all his life had made him feel quite the way he felt, on that wild little pond, in the presence of those two enormous swans. They were so much bigger than any bird he had ever seen before. The nest was big, too—a mound of sticks and grasses. The female was sitting on eggs; the male glided slowly back and forth, guarding her.

When Sam reached camp, tired and hungry, he found his father frying a couple of fish for lunch.

“Where have
you
been?” asked Mr. Beaver.

“Exploring,” replied Sam. “I walked over to a pond about a mile and a half from here. It's the one we see from the air as we're coming in. It isn't much of a place—nowhere near as big as this lake we're on.”

“Did you see anything over there?” asked his father.

“Well,” said Sam, “it's a swampy pond with a lot of reeds and cattails. I don't think it would be any good for fishing. And it's hard to get to—you have to cross a swamp.”

“See anything?” repeated Mr. Beaver.

“I saw a muskrat,” said Sam, “and a few Red-winged Blackbirds.”

Mr. Beaver looked up from the wood stove, where the fish were sizzling in a pan.

“Sam,” he said, “I know you like to go exploring. But don't forget—these woods and marshes are not like the country around home in Montana. If you ever go over to that pond again, be careful you don't get lost. I don't like you crossing swamps. They're treacherous. You could step into a soggy place and get bogged down, and there wouldn't be anybody to pull you out.”

“I'll be careful,” said Sam. He knew perfectly well
he would be going back to the pond where the swans were. And he had no intention of getting lost in the woods. He felt relieved that he had not told his father about seeing the swans, but he felt queer about it, too. Sam was not a sly boy, but he was odd in one respect: he liked to keep things to himself. And he liked being alone, particularly when he was in the woods. He enjoyed the life on his father's cattle ranch in the Sweet Grass country in Montana. He loved his mother. He loved Duke, his cow pony. He loved riding the range. He loved watching guests who came to board at the Beavers' ranch every summer.

But the thing he enjoyed most in life was these camping trips in Canada with his father. Mrs. Beaver didn't care for the woods, so she seldom went along—it was usually just Sam and Mr. Beaver. They would motor to the border and cross into Canada. There Mr. Beaver would hire a bush pilot to fly them to the lake where his camp was, for a few days of fishing and loafing and exploring. Mr. Beaver did most of the fishing and loafing. Sam did the exploring. And then the pilot would return to take them out. His name was Shorty. They would hear the sound of his motor and run out and wave and watch him glide down onto the lake and taxi his plane in to the dock. These were the pleasantest days of Sam's life, these days in the woods, far, far from everywhere—no automobiles, no roads, no people, no noise, no school, no homework, no problems, except the problem of getting lost. And, of course, the problem of what to be when he grew up. Every boy has
that
problem.

After supper that evening, Sam and his father sat for a while on the porch. Sam was reading a bird book.

“Pop,” said Sam, “do you think we'll be coming back to camp again about a month from now—I mean, in about thirty-five days or something like that?”

“I guess so,” replied Mr. Beaver. “I certainly hope so. But why thirty-five days? What's so special about thirty-five days?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Sam. “I just thought it might be very nice around here in thirty-five days.”

“That's the craziest thing I ever heard of,” said Mr. Beaver. “It's nice here
all
the time.”

Sam went indoors. He knew a lot about birds, and he knew it would take a swan about thirty-five days to hatch her eggs. He hoped he could be at the pond to see the young ones when they came out of the eggs.

Sam kept a diary—a daybook about his life. It was just a cheap notebook that was always by his bed. Every night, before he turned in, he would write in the book. He wrote about things he had done, things he had seen, and thoughts he had had. Sometimes he drew a picture. He always ended by asking himself a question so he would have something to think about
while falling asleep. On the day he found the swan's nest, this is what Sam wrote in his diary:

I saw a pair of trumpeter swans today on a small pond east of camp. The female has a nest with eggs in it. I saw three, but I'm going to put four in the picture—I think she was laying another one. This is the greatest discovery I ever made in my entire life. I did not tell Pop. My bird book says baby swans are called cygnets. I am going back tomorrow to visit the great swans again. I heard a fox bark today. Why does a fox bark? Is it because he is mad, or worried, or hungry, or because he is sending a message to another fox?
Why does a fox bark?

Sam closed his notebook, undressed, crawled into his bunk, and lay there with his eyes closed, wondering why a fox barks. In a few minutes he was asleep.