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The home of the Little family was a pleasant place near a park in New York City. In the mornings the sun streamed in through the east windows, and all the Littles were up early as a general rule. Stuart was a great help to his parents, and to his older brother George, because of his small size and because he could do things that a mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them. One day when Mrs Little was washing out the bathtub after Mr Little had taken a bath, she lost a ring off her finger and was horrified to discover that it had fallen down the drain.
‘What had I better do?’ she cried, trying to keep the tears back.
‘If I were you,’ said George, ‘I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook and tie it on to a piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it.’ So Mrs Little found a piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour she fished for the ring; but it was dark down the drain and the hook always seemed to catch on something before she could get it down to where the ring was.
‘What luck?’ inquired Mr Little, coming into the bathroom.
‘No luck at all,’ said Mrs Little. ‘The ring is so far down I can’t fish it up.’
‘Why don’t we send Stuart down after it?’ suggested Mr Little. ‘How about it, Stuart, would you like to try?’
‘Yes, I would,’ Stuart replied, ‘but I think I’d better get into my old pants. I imagine it’s wet down there.’
‘It’s all of that,’ said George, who was a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn’t worked. So Stuart slipped into his old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He decided to carry the string along with him, leaving one end in charge of his father. ‘When I jerk three times on the string, pull me up,’ he said. And while Mr Little knelt in the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to view. In a minute or so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr Little carefully hauled it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring safely around his neck.
‘Oh, my brave little son,’ said Mrs Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him.
‘How was it down there?’ asked Mr Little, who was always curious to know about places he had never been to.
‘It was all right,’ said Stuart.
But the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother’s violet water before he felt himself again. Everybody in the family thought he had been awfully good about the whole thing.
STUART was also helpful when it came to Ping-pong. The Littles liked Ping-pong, but the balls had a way of rolling under chairs, sofas, and radiators, and this meant that the players were forever stooping down and reaching under things. Stuart soon learned to chase balls, and it was a great sight to see him come out from under a hot radiator, pushing a Ping-pong ball with all his might, the perspiration rolling down his cheeks. The ball, of course, was almost as high as he was, and he had to throw his whole weight against it in order to keep it rolling.
The Littles had a grand piano in their living room, which was all right except that one of the keys was a sticky key and didn’t work properly. Mrs Little said she thought it must be the damp weather, but I don’t see how it could be the damp weather, for the key had been sticking for about four years, during which time there had been many bright clear days. But anyway, the key stuck, and was a great inconvenience to anyone trying to play the piano. It bothered George particularly when he was playing the ‘Scarf Dance,’ which was rather lively. It was George who had the idea of stationing Stuart inside the piano to push the key up the second it was played. This was no easy job for Stuart, as he had to crouch down between the felt hammers so that he wouldn’t get hit on the head. But Stuart liked it just the same: it was exciting inside the piano, dodging about, and the noise was quite terrific. Sometimes after a long session he would emerge quite deaf, as though he had just stepped out of an airplane after a long journey; and it would be some little time before he really felt normal again.
Mr and Mrs Little often discussed Stuart quietly between themselves when he wasn’t around, for they had never quite recovered from the shock and surprise of having a mouse in the family. He was so very tiny and he presented so many problems to his parents. Mr Little said that, for one thing, there must be no references to ‘mice’ in their conversation. He made Mrs Little tear from the nursery songbook the page about the ‘Three Blind Mice, See How They Run.’
‘I don’t want Stuart to get a lot of notions in his head,’ said Mr Little. ‘I should feel badly to have my son grow up fearing that a farmer’s wife was going to cut off his tail with a carving knife. It is such things that make children dream bad dreams when they go to bed at night.’
‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Little, ‘and I think we had better start thinking about the poem “’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” I think it might embarrass Stuart to hear mice mentioned in such a belittling manner.’
‘That’s right,’ said her husband, ‘but what shall we say when we come to that line in the poem? We’ll have to say something. We can’t just say “’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring.” That doesn’t sound complete; it needs a word to rhyme with house.’
‘What about louse?’ asked Mrs Little.
‘Or grouse,’ said Mr Little.
‘I suggest souse,’ remarked George, who had been listening to the conversation from across the room.
It was decided that louse was the best substitute for mouse, and so when Christmas came around Mrs Little carefully rubbed out the word mouse from the poem and wrote in the word louse, and Stuart always thought that the poem went this way:
’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse.
The thing that worried Mr Little most was the mousehole in the pantry. This hole had been made by some mice in the days before the Littles came to live in the house, and nothing had been done about stopping it up. Mr Little was not at all sure that he understood Stuart’s real feeling about a mousehole. He didn’t know where the hole led to, and it made him uneasy to think that Stuart might some day feel the desire to venture into it.
‘After all, he does look a good deal like a mouse,’ said Mr Little to his wife. ‘And I’ve never seen a mouse yet that didn’t like to go into a hole.’
