Stuart Little by E. B. White, Garth Williams Read Free Book Online

that he
would run away from home without telling anybody, and go out into the world and
look for Margalo. “While I am about it, I might as well seek my fortune, too,”
he thought.
    Before daybreak next morning
he got out his biggest handkerchief and in it he placed his toothbrush, his money,
his soap, his comb and brush, a clean suit of underwear, and his pocket
compass.
    “I ought to take along
something to remember my mother by,” he thought. So he crept into his mother’s bedroom
where she was still asleep, climbed the lamp cord to her bureau, and pulled a
strand of Mrs.
    Little’s hair from her comb.
He rolled the hair up neatly and laid it in the handkerchief with the other things.
Then he rolled everything up into a bundle and tied it onto one end of a wooden
match. With his gray felt hat cocked jauntily on one side of his head and his
pack slung across his shoulder, Stuart stole softly out of the house.
    “Good-by, beautiful home,”
he whispered.
    “I wonder if I will ever see
you again.”
    Stuart stood uncertainly for
a moment in the street in front of the house. The world was a big place in
which to go looking for a lost bird. North, south, east, or west—which way
should he go? Stuart decided that he needed advice on such an important matter,
so he started uptown to find his friend Dr. Carey, the surgeon-dentist, owner of
the schooner Wasp.
    The doctor was glad to see
Stuart. He took him right into his inner office where he was busy pulling a man’s
tooth. The man’s name was Edward Clydesdale, and he had several wads of gauze
in his cheek to hold his mouth open good and wide. The tooth was a hard one to
get out, and the Doctor let Stuart sit on his instrument tray so they could
talk during the operation.
    “This is my friend, Stuart
Little,” he said to the man with the gauze in his cheek.
    “How ‘oo oo, Soo’rt,”
replied the man, as best he could.
    “Very well, thank you,”
replied Stuart.
    “Well, what’s on your mind,
Stuart?” asked Dr. Carey, seizing hold of the man’s tooth with a pair of
pincers and giving a strong pull.
    “I ran away from home this
morning,” explained Stuart. “I am going out into the world to seek my fortune
and to look for a lost bird. Which direction do you think I should start out
in?”
    Dr. Carey twisted the tooth
a bit and racked it back and forth. “What color is the bird?” he asked.
    “Brown,” said Stuart.
    “Better go north,” said Dr.
Carey.
    “Don’t you think so, Mr.
Clydesdale?”
    “’ook in ‘entral ‘ark,” said
Mr.
    Clydesdale.
    “What?” cried Stuart.
    “I ‘ay, ‘ook in ‘entral ‘ark,”
said Mr.
    Clydesdale.
    “He says look in Central
Park,” explained Dr. Carey, tucking another big wad of gauze into Mr.
Clydesdale’s cheek. “And it’s a good suggestion. Oftentimes people with decayed
teeth have sound ideas. Central Park is a favorite place for birds in the
spring.” Mr. Clydesdale was nodding his head vigorously, and seemed about to
speak again.
    “If ‘oo ‘on’t ‘ocate a ‘ird
in ‘entral ‘ark, ‘ake a ‘ew ‘ork ‘ew ‘aven and ‘artford ‘ailway ‘n ‘ook in ‘onnecticut.”
    “What?” cried Stuart,
delighted at this new kind of talk. “What say, Mr.
    Clydesdale?”
    “If ‘oo ‘on’t ‘ocate a ‘ird
in ‘entral ‘ark, ‘ake a ‘ew ‘ork ‘ew ‘aven and ‘artford ‘ailway ‘n ‘ook in ‘onnecticut.”
    “He says if you can’t locate
the bird in Central Park, take a New York New Haven and Hartford Railway train
and look in Connecticut,” said Dr. Carey. Then he removed the rolls of gauze
from Mr. Clydesdale’s mouth. “Rinse, please!” he said.
    Mr. Clydesdale took a glass
of
    mouthwash that was beside the
chair and rinsed his mouth out.
    “Tell me this, Stuart,” said
Dr. Carey.
    “How are you traveling? On
foot?”
    “Yes, sir,” said Stuart.
    “Well, I think you’d better
have a car. As soon as I get this tooth out, we’ll see what can be done