Stuart Little: Chapters 10–12

He knew a Maltese cat in the A & P, a white Persian in the apartment house next door, a tortoise-shell in the delicatessen, a tiger cat in the basement of the branch library, and a beautiful young Angora who had escaped from a cage in a pet shop on Third Avenue and had gone to live a free life of her own in the tool house of the small park near Stuart’s home.

“Well,” said Snowbell’s friend, “all I can say is, you’ve got more self-control than I have.”

“Look here,” he heard the Angora cat say to Snowbell, “I admit that a cat has a duty toward her own people, and that under the circumstances it would be wrong for you to eat Margalo. But I'm not a member of your family and there is nothing to stop me from eating her, is there?”
“Nothing that I can think of offhand,” said Snowbell.

“That’s simple,” said Snowbell. “Climb this vine, enter George’s room through the open window, then go downstairs and you’ll find the bird asleep in the Boston fern on the bookcase.”
“Easy enough,” said the Angora, licking her chops. “I’m obliged to you, sir.”

“I don’t see why you have to make a pariah out of me just because that disagreeable little chippy flew the coop,” said Snowbell, irritably.

“I don’t see why you have to make a pariah out of me just because that disagreeable little chippy flew the coop,” said Snowbell, irritably.

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.

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.

“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.

Dr. Carey grabbed the tooth with the pincers again, and this time he pulled so long and so hard and with such determination that the tooth popped out, which was a great relief to everybody, particularly to Mr. Clydesdale.

It was bright yellow with black fenders, a streamlined car of graceful design.

“I enjoy building model cars and boats and other things when I am not extracting teeth. This car has a real gasoline motor in it. It has quite a good deal of power—do you think you can handle it, Stuart?”

First there came a crashing noise over by the fireplace. The hearth broom fell down.

Dr. Carey leapt for the spot and pounced on the place where the sound had come from.

The Doctor pressed the proper button and there it stood in plain sight again, its front fenders crumpled, its radiator leaking, its headlights broken, its windshield shattered, its right rear tire punctured, and quite a bit of yellow paint scratched off the hood.

The car ran beautifully and although people were inclined to stare at him, Stuart didn’t mind.

“Do you think you can maintain discipline?” asked the Superintendent.
“Of course I can,” replied Stuart. “I’ll make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself. Don’t worry about me.”

He parked his car briskly at the door of the school, stalked boldly into the room, found a yardstick leaning against Miss Gunderson’s desk, and climbed hand-over-hand to the top.

Stuart scrambled nimbly up to the top of the stack of books and jumped for the button on the bell.

His weight was enough to make it ring, and Stuart promptly slid down, walked to the front of the desk, and said: “Let me have your attention, please!”

He glared fiercely at the children and they made no more inquiries about Miss Gunderson.

The pupils filed obediently down the aisles and dropped into their seats, and in a moment there was silence in the classroom.

Seizing a coat lapel in either hand, to make himself look like a professor, Stuart began: “Anybody absent?”

“Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone. I consider it a very fine thing to spell words correctly and I strongly urge every one of you to buy a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and consult it whenever you are in the slightest doubt. So much for spelling. What’s next?”

“Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone. I consider it a very fine thing to spell words correctly and I strongly urge every one of you to buy a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and consult it whenever you are in the slightest doubt. So much for spelling. What’s next?”