Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary Read Free Book Online

street.
    When the girls came to Austine’s house, they found Mrs. Allen on her knees beside a flat box of pansy plants. She was taking them out of the box and setting them into a border along the driveway.
    “Hello there,” she said. “Since tomorrow is Memorial Day and there isn’t any school, how would you like to go on a picnic?” Ellen did not say anything. She thought Mrs. Allen meant her, too, but she was not sure. She hoped so. That was the trouble with the word you . Sometimes it meant one person and sometimes it meant a lot of people. Maybe Mrs. Allen was talking to Austine and not to both of them.
    Mrs.Allen said,“Ellen, I have already asked your mother and she says you may go.”
    “Thank you. I’d love to go.” Maybe a picnic would make Austine forget about horses.And if they went on a picnic,Austine couldn’t come to Ellen’s house to play and perhaps say something about horseback riding in front of Mrs. Tebbits. Ellen was worried about what her mother would say if she found out how Ellen had exaggerated.
    “Where are we going?” asked Austine.
    “We’re going to drive out toward Mount Hood.The rhododendrons are beginning to bloom, and I thought it would be nice to see them blooming in the woods.”
    The next morning at ten o’clock Ellen ran down Tillamook Street and around the corner to Austine’s house. For her share of the picnic she carried eight deviled eggs carefully packed in a cardboard box. Mr. Allen was backing out the car. Mrs. Allen sat in the front seat and Austine in the back.
    “Hop in,” said Mr. Allen. “Bruce isn’t going with us.The boy scouts are marching in a parade.”
    Ellen was glad she and Austine could each sit by a window.That made it easier to look for white horses and to play the alphabet game.The first one to see a white horse got to make a wish. Ellen was going to wish Austine would forget about her horseback riding.
    The girls always played the alphabet game when they rode in a car. Each watched the signs on her own side of the road for the letters of the alphabet. Each letter had to be found in order or it did not count.The k in a Sky Chief Gasoline sign could not be used unless a j had already been seen. The girl who had a Burma Shave sign on her side of the road at the right time was lucky because it contained in the right order both u and v , two hard letters to find. The game went quickly at first, because there were lots of signs, but as they neared the mountains the signs became more scarce.
    Ellen was looking for a Texaco filling sta-tion for an x when Austine shouted, “Look, a white horse! I’ve got dibs on it.” She shut her eyes to wish.
    Ellen was sorry she had not seen the horse first. She needed a wish. Finally both girls were down to z . By then the car was winding along the mountain roads.
    “Z!” shouted Ellen. “I win. There was a sign by that bridge that said ‘Zigzag River.’”
    “That’s all right,” said Austine generously.
    “I’m going to get my wish.”
    It was a few more miles along the highway that Austine saw the horses. “Look, Daddy! Horses for rent, fifty cents an hour!
    Please stop,” she begged.
    Mr. Allen drew over to the side of the road near some horses in a makeshift corral.
    Austine scrambled out of the car and ran to the horses, while the others followed.
    “Daddy, please let us go horseback riding.
    All my life I’ve wanted to ride a horse.
    Please, Daddy.You and Mother could go on and look at the rhododendrons and come back for us.”
    “Would it be safe for the girls to ride alone?” Mrs. Allen asked the man with the horses.
    “Please, Mother,” begged Austine. “Make my wish come true.”
    “Sure. Kids do it all the time,” answered the man. “They ride up that dirt road as far as the old sawmill and turn around and come back.The horses know the way.Takes about half an hour. Road runs right along the highway.”
    “They won’t be thrown from the horses?” asked Mrs.