The Story of Freginald Read Online Free

whispered. “Beware of a tall, dark man. A man with a long, black mustache. He is coming nearer and nearer. He brings trouble.” She shook her head ominously, then dropped Louise’s paw, leaned back in her chair, and began knitting. “There,” she said, “that is all I can tell you.”
    Louise thanked her politely. But he didn’t see that she had told him much that anybody else couldn’t have told him. That part about fame as a poet was pleasant, to hear, but he knew it was just her way of being nice. The only thing she had really told him was about the tall, dark man. Probably she had just made that up. But still, he decided that he would keep an eye out for a long, black mustache, and when he saw one he’d go the other way. There wasn’t any sense in taking chances.
    There was a little girl elephant with the show, and curiously enough she had the same name as the bear: Louise. The two Louises didn’t like each other very well. The bear thought the little elephant was stuck up, which she was, and the elephant thought the little bear was rough and horrid, which he wasn’t—or at least not more than bears usually are. So most of the time they played on opposite sides of the camp. And this led to a very funny misunderstanding. For when anybody wanted either one of them, he would shout: “Louise! Louise!” Then both the animals would come running and would get there at exactly the same time.
    After this had happened a few times, everyone said: “How fond those two are of each other! They never seem to be apart a minute! Why, I never saw such devotion!”
    It happened so many times that it got to be a regular joke with the older animals to go out and shout: “Louise!” even when they didn’t want either of the Louises, just to see if for once they wouldn’t appear together. But they always did, and then the animals would put their heads on one side and smile and say: “Oh, how darling! Oh, how too perfectly sweet!”
    All these things made our Louise very mad. They also made Louise the elephant mad, and one day when they had been called three times in about half an hour she said angrily to the bear: “Look here, you. We’ve got to do something about thith. I jutht won’t thtand it any longer, tho now!”
    She always lisped a little when she was angry, and the little bear mimicked her. “Oh, you jutht won’t thtand it, tho now! Well, thuppose you think of thome thing elthe, then. I don’t like it any better than you do, having people think I like to play with you, you thtuck up thithy, you!”

    He was pretty angry himself, but when he saw her eyes fill up with tears that rolled right down her funny short stubby little trunk, he was sorry right away.
    â€œOh, please don’t cry,” he said. “Gee, I didn’t mean anything!” He tried to pat her back, but she shook his paw off crossly and cried harder and harder.
    â€œOh, don’t,” said the bear. “Please, Louise, Louise, please.—Oh, listen, Louise, if you’ll stop I’ll make up a poem about you. Will you? Listen.”
    Her sobs sunk to sniffles and she opened her eyes, which she had shut in order to cry better.
    â€œListen!” said the bear.
    â€œO loveliest of all Louises,
    Say why the sight of me displeases.
    Oh, could you never learn to care
    For this adoring, humble bear?
    When you perform, as is your duty,
    In all your elephantine beauty,
    Your tricks before the audience,
    My admiration is immense,
    And when you dance in airy grace
    I gaze enraptured on your face.
    Nothing about you but endears—
    Your eyes, your lovely floppy ears,
    Your graceful trunk. Don’t be a tease.
    Oh, tell me, beautiful Louise,
    And give me quick your answer, please.”
    â€œOh,” said the elephant when he had finished, “do you really mean that?”
    â€œNo,” said the bear. “Of course I