Freddy Goes to the North Pole by Walter R. Brooks Page B

winter’s over, I’ll be surprised.”
    Charles hung his head, but Ferdinand came to his rescue. “I think it’s a good idea for Charles to deliver his Florida talk tonight,” he said. “We’ll stay here today and make snowshoes. I’ll go notify those chickadees over in that pine there, and they’ll tell all the other birds and animals. I bet we have a big attendance.”
    For the rest of the day under the crow’s supervision the travellers gnawed down small saplings and tore off strips of bark, which they bent and tied into rough snowshoes. Charles alone was absent. He had retired into a thicket where he could rehearse his speech privately, and every now and then phrases would float out to the workers and they would smile at each other. “I have been asked.… A very unpretentious task, my friends.… Undaunted I flew at the alligator and pecked him so that he winced. ‘Sir,’ I said.… With my skill in debate, I of course won the prize without difficulty.…” And so on.
    The lecture that evening, however, was a great success. A large and enthusiastic audience of deer, coons, foxes, rabbits, porcupines, and skunks hung breathlessly on Charles’s words, rocked with laughter at his sallies, and cheered wildly at the stories of hairbreadth escapes—which, as he said afterwards, while not strictly true, were founded on fact. The other members of the rescue party, with the exception of the children, Henrietta, and the bear, acted as ushers at the beginning, but sneaked off when he began to talk and played twenty questions until the meeting broke up. They had heard it all so many times that they felt they just couldn’t stand it again, and, as Ferdinand said: “We’re all fond of Charles, but he is tiresome when he gets to talking about himself, and if we stay, we’ll get so irritated we’ll throw things, and that wouldn’t do.”
    The children stayed, and at first they were so delighted to have so many animals around them that they were a little noisy, but although they didn’t understand what Charles was saying, they understood pretty soon that he was making a speech, and, being considerate children, they sat quietly and applauded when the others applauded, and at the end when some of the animals went up to shake hands with the lecturer, they went up too.
    The bear stayed, partly because he hadn’t heard Charles talk before, and partly because two of his cousins whom he hadn’t seen in a long time came to the lecture. He sat with them in the front row, but he was so glad to see them again that he talked a good deal and had to be shushed by the other animals several times before he would keep still.
    As for Henrietta, although in private she scolded her husband soundly at every opportunity, she was really very proud of him and would fly at anyone else who ventured even the slightest criticism of him, and so tonight she perched quite close beside him on the low branch from which he spoke, and admired him so openly and applauded so enthusiastically that it embarrased even Charles a little.
    â€œNot so loud!” he whispered to her once when she continued stamping and shouting “Bravo!” long after the audience had stopped. “They’ll think it’s funny.”
    â€œThey don’t know I’m your wife,” she muttered.
    â€œThey’ll think I hired you to applaud,” he replied.
    â€œOh, shut up and go on with your talk,” she whispered angrily. Then she shouted “Bravo!” again and looked him defiantly in the eye. And Charles went hastily on with the lecture.
    The box-office, presided over by Ferdinand, took in enough food to feed them for a week, a heavy flannel shirt checquered in big red and black squares, two old sweaters, four pairs of lumbermen’s heavy socks, a knitted bed jacket with pink ribbons, a whisk broom, two boxes of matches, a bottle of